The concept of the Broadway Center's Cathedral series is simplistic to the point of perfection: get some beautiful-sounding artists to perform in beautiful spaces designed to bounce around beautiful sounds. These are not raucous events, but rather contemplative experiences that take exploit churches' natural abilities to heighten and highlight negative space. This time around, my money is on Denver's Paper Bird as the band most likely to fill in those empty spaces. A baroque art-folk-pop seven-piece, there's never a moment wasted or tossed away without being occupied by some lively instruments or flatly gorgeous harmonies. The opening track Rooms, "As I Am," is as potent an opening salvo as I've heard in some time, the energy building and building in a pleasantly organic fashion, the voices aching to pull every last note from deep inside, propelling them out with great velocity.

PAPER BIRD, w/ Shenandoah Davis, Elk and Boar, 7:30 p.m., Friday, June 21, Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 901 N. J St., Tacoma, $16, 253.591.5894