Bookended by a pair of familiar covers — with the dozen or so originals in between evoking a broad span of atavistic influences ranging from ’60s girl groups to ’80s Britpop to the early-aughts garage-rock revival — Dum Dum Girls’ Sunday-night concert at the Black Cat conveyed a vibe of nostalgia and retrospection that belied the Californian quartet’s status amongst indie rock’s latest next big things.

If Bruce Springsteen ever played the D.C. area on September 11, it’s not hard to imagine that the performance would entail a long, workmanlike set of earnestly anthemic music, plenty of emotional catharsis, and at least a handful of politically-engaged soliloquies between songs. For better or worse, local concert-goers were denied that spectacle this year. Instead, they got Vampire Weekend, the much-hyped indie-rock band that, coincidentally, vowed at a 2008 9:30 Club show to return with enough new material to fuel a marathon set worthy of “The Boss.”