The underground is alive and well.

And the proof is in the pudding. Animal Collective sonically astonished a capacity crowd — 600 advanced tickets sold — at Lansing's The Temple Club, 500 E. Grand River Ave., Friday night.

The New York-based foursome didn't just put on a show, it built a progressive pyramid of unique sound. Each song blurred and escalated into the next with a savage mix of electronica, folk, psychedelic and boogie-woogie.

Animal Collective's extraordinary collaboration stems from childhood bonds in suburban Baltimore. Each musician has an outlandish stage name to match the group's charmingly unconventional reverberation.

Lead singer and guitar player David Portner goes by the name Avey Tare. While gardening, he came up with the alias by merely taking the "D" off Davey, and the Tare comes from the act of tearing his name apart. Friday night, he bounced around stage like a grasshopper and sang, screamed and mumbled with a stellar vocal range.

Stand-up drummer Noah Lennox is Panda Bear. The name comes from a childhood drawing Lennox sketched on a mix-tape cover. He generated spacey beats fused with hard-hitting cymbal crashes as the backbone of Animal Collective.

Programmer Brian Weitz is Geologist because of his love for science. During the hour-and-a-half set, he sampled the wildest sounds this side of the galaxy while wearing a headlight strapped around his forehead.

Guitar player Josh Dibb used to write Avey Tare letters in farcical Romantic-era style signed Conrad Deacon, so he became Deakin. The gangly six-string strummer gingerly bounded around the stage during intense musical moments and joined in with one-of-kind squeals during the band's vocal jams.

The band started the musical extravaganza with a drifting melodious intro growing into "Banshee Beat," — track six from the ensemble's latest release "Feels."

The soul-warming tune was just what the doctor ordered for 17-year-old Aaron Smith from Muskegon since he came to the show just wanting to hear anything from the "Feels" album. Smith also said Animal Collective's sound is impressively unique.

"I can't really describe it. It's more of a feeling," Smith said.

These days, Animal Collective hardly ever dresses up in surreal furry costumes as it did in earlier shows, but there was a man dressed up as a white rabbit making his way through the crowd — allowing fans to wear the bunny mask and clapping off beat to the tunes.

The experimental band ended the artistically inspiring set with another well-crafted song from "Feels" — "Purple Bottle." It's an up-tempo jam with a great groove that turned the Temple Club floor into a trampoline of hip-shakers.

Overall, the show was remarkably original and beautiful.