The dim, welcoming cave that is Guilt & Company housed a sinfully guilty night of blissful music, starring the Ponderosas. Vancouver, get ready to funk with this music, because this band practically set the stage on fire with their bluesy balls of fury. The Ponderosas are a band fit to listen to at a Caribbean festival with the hypnotizing melodic voices of Janette King and Kristie McCracken leading the stage and playing guitar, while King rocked the keys.

The band operated a range of instruments with Ian Cardona on drums, Dave Taylor on guitar, Lucas Teodoro da Silva on trumpet and backup vocals, Kevin Tang on trombone, Jay Smith on bass guitar and emceeing, and Chris Couto playing timbales and congoing the backbeat. With eight people on stage, the intricacy of their music made it hard to tell where one instrument stopped and the other began.

The Ponderosas played tunes such as “I’m So Cold,” a paralyzing tune that makes you lust for past lovers. It carved a path of slow somber, a mellifluous voice harmonizing with the guitar as conga drums pounded the back beat. During “Imagination,” the Ponderosas got straight up grassroots, sat down on the stage, and almost transformed the bar into what felt like Wreck Beach. With funky trumpet beats being met with congas, interplayed with rhythmic guitar, this band brought a funky rundown that the usually conservative Vancouver audience got off their bar stools to groove to.

The dynamic of this local eight-piece unit flowed together with alluring chemistry, receiving claps from outer space and beyond. Maybe that’s just the liquor talking, but there was serious audience applause. A night of dancing into smolder, the Ponderosas are on the map.

Check out the Ponderosas latest EP, The Path, online now.