Local Natives pull off a big music stunt: a free rooftop concert in Silver Lake during rush hour

The sidewalk on Sunset Boulevard was already slammed when Local Natives walked onto the roof of their practice space in Silver Lake and started playing early on Thursday evening. To the surprise of many, the band was able to perform nearly a full semi-secret set on the rooftop-turned-stage at rush hour.

The intersection at Sunset Boulevard and Micheltorena Street filled with hundreds of hipsters tipped off by the band’s social media, as well as curious locals who had been out grabbing coffee and passing drivers honking approval at the gumption of the whole thing.

The L.A. band, a fixture on the local indie rock scene and one of the city’s most celebrated rock acts, was championing the upcoming release of its new album, “Sunlit Youth,” due Sept. 9.

Not even the most ardent fans anticipated that the show would last longer than 15 minutes or so without getting busted -- the band didn’t either.

“That’s five songs. We didn’t expect to make it this far,” said singer-guitarist Taylor Rice.

But the act kept on playing, and fans kept crowding the hilly lawn beneath them. The band’s manager, Phil Costello of the firm Red Light Management, tried to shoo people off of the street to avoid passing buses.

The act’s publicist on Friday morning estimated the crowd at about 1,500 people.

A few fans, two toting jugs of organic kombucha, tentatively climbed over a chain-link fence into the property; the fence eventually succumbed to them.

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But the evening’s cheerful chaos (which happened just before the shooting in Dallas made the news) fit the spirit of the band’s new record. Several new songs spoke overtly to the need for a release of societal tension and a fresh call for optimism.

“These can be cynical times, but there is hope,” Rice told the crowd.

The band has never been very explicitly political, but that may be changing (a Facebook post attributed to the band on Thursday read, “In a time of cynicism dressed as realism, when it feels like the world might be falling apart around us, I believe there is reason to be hopeful, optimistic, and idealistic”).

Lyrics to the new single, “Fountain of Youth,” seemed to wrestle with the current mood of unrest: “I think we better listen to these kids / We can’t keep pretending we know what we’re doing.”

“We can do whatever we want,” the band sang. “We can say whatever we mean.”

It was a happy and well-deserved occasion for the band. But it was one that, by the end of the week’s news (and given the Game and Snoop Dogg’s downtown anti-police-brutality rally the next morning), ultimately had more serious undertones.

By the band’s eighth song, an LAPD chopper had buzzed briefly overhead and a cop car had driven by, slowing but not stopping. It looked like more than 1,000 well-coiffed rock fans could actually flash-mob an empty Silver Lake lot for a concert without being broken up.

Rice ultimately closed out the set by climbing down the side of the one-story building into the teeming mass of fans below. He ran around the crowd as the band jammed to “Sun Hands,” one of its rowdier hits, and climbed back up with a huge grin. Local Natives had successfully pulled off the stunt.

The crowds dispersed in search of Ubers and upmarket Thai food nearby. One of L.A.’s best indie bands had just commandeered one of the city’s busiest corners for 45 minutes of freewheeling live music.

Was that the sweeping change the band described in its lyrics? Maybe, maybe not. But it was evidence that L.A. is still a great music town for taking big chances.

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