Crunching down an icy Williamsburg sidewalk, Sarah Assbring said that when she started El Perro Del Mar, she wrote down a rule that she would never perform live. Assbring, who has been releasing music as El Perro Del Mar since 2005, sniffled in the cold February air and recounted a list of principles that she wrote for herself when she was 24, or 25. Chief among them was the rule that she would never do a live show. "I felt that that would take away a big part of the mystery of the music," she said, adding, "I was also a more introverted person at that time too so it worked along with who I was."

Thankfully, Assbring, who is from Gothenburg, Sweden, eventually decided to ignore this principle. She was in New York City for a couple of stops on a North American tour with Taken By Trees, a fellow Swede who, like Assbring, makes rich, plaintive music under an assumed name (her real name is Victoria Bergsman). On this night, the two played the Knitting Factory--a NYC institution that recently reopened in Brooklyn after a two-decade run in downtown Manhattan.

On the tour, El Perro Del Mar and Taken By Trees were being backed by the same band--a scruffy group of three studiously talented musicians who had all taken to regularly shining their black leather boots before shows. This video has them supplying a firm foundation for El Perro Del Mar as she sings an affectionate cover of Big Star's "Blue Moon" (which has previously been reworked by Johansson, a Swedish musician who inspired Assbring's cover).

Thinking back on her abandoned list of principles before the show, Assbring sounded serene. "There is a beauty to eventually come to the conclusion that you don't know anything," she said.