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Music Review

The potency of a muted style on display in Hundred Waters’ show

Nicole Miglis sang during Hundred Waters’ show at the Sinclair Saturday.Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe

CAMBRIDGE — The Florida four-piece Hundred Waters’ approach to making music is reminiscent of lacework: The skeletal piano lines of lead singer Nicole Miglis thread through the drones and pulses provided by the guitars and electronics of Trayer Tryon and Paul Giese, while drummer Zach Tetreault anchors the grace. Miglis’s vocals float within this landscape, murmuring introspective lyrics. The end result has a staggering amount of beauty, which the band’s live presentation on Saturday at the Sinclair only intensified; music and lights floated around the room, with Miglis’s voice curling around expressions of sorrow and hope like a plume of smoke.

Since the band’s formation in 2011, Hundred Waters’ subtle, intricate take on electronic pop has both sharpened and expanded, with aesthetics becoming more refined as members’ ambitions widened. Their most recent releases — including the 2014 full-length “The Moon Rang Out Like a Bell” and its attendant remix album from earlier this year — have been released on the label OWSLA, which is run by the composer-producer Skrillex. He specializes in assaulting the senses with bludgeoning beats, and while Hundred Waters’ more muted style seems at opposition with that aesthetic, the group’s music provides no less of a gut-punch.

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Saturday's show opened with the dreamy “Out Alee,” which retains its pop sensibilities despite being in the jittery time signature 7/4; “Cavity,” meanwhile, felt like it was being performed from inside a beating (and broken) heart. The meditative “Show Me Love” has the gravity of a prayer; it was featured in Coca-Cola’s anti-bullying Super Bowl ad, and its elegant take on self-betterment helped elevate the commercial. “Don't let me show cruelty/ though I may make mistakes/ Don't let me show ugliness/ Though I know I can hate,” Miglis sings, and her hushed tones while performing it on Saturday gave its simply expressed desires even more potency.

The Brooklyn-based singer Mitski also zeroes in on emotion, and her third album, “Bury Me at Makeout Creek” (Double Double Whammy), is littered with hyperspecific lyrics that have a knowing wit (“I was so young when I behaved 25/ yet now I've grown into a small child” she sings on the longing “First Love/Late Spring”) and off-kilter melodies that make the feelings she expresses even more resonant. Sonically, her brief set split the difference between stripped-down confessional and animated indie chug, with her airy vocals narrowing into a full-on caterwaul on the closing track, the churning “Drunk Walk Home.” The set felt too brief, but it was hardly without catharsis.

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Maura Johnston can be reached at maura@maura.com.