When Tom Waits went out looking for the heart of Saturday night, he found the crack of pool balls, neon buzzin' and a barmaid smilin' from the corner of her eye.

I might have eventually found all three while roaming around downtown on a recent Saturday night. (Does a smiling girl on Nu'uanu Avenue asking me for five bucks and a ride to Waikiki count?) Instead I stumbled into the oddly cozy, left-of-mainstream Electr01yfe weekly at Indigo Eurasian Cuisine.

Why oddly cozy?

Maybe it was the initial half- hour or so I spent chilling in Indigo's Green Room to a clicking and popping soundtrack of warm, all-vinyl eclectic dancehall, funk and soul, while watching a bridal party celebrate with shots. Perhaps it was my next half-hour spent with electro-house, techno and breakbeats, mirrorball spots and a silent, wall-projected manga flick in Indigo's Opium Den.

If one found either room's musical pleasures unpleasurable or as annoying as that look-at-how-cool-we-are Electr01yfe (pronounced Electrolife) moniker, Indigo's outdoor seating offered a chance for serious chats, backed by soft, anonymous piped-in house. A smallish, semidressy twentysomething crowd scattered throughout Indigo kept things low-key lounge comfortable.

Erin Lam of Mililani and a couple of friends were enjoying their first visit to Electr01yfe for similar reasons.

"We can get a table without having to pay for it. That's one good thing," said Lam, by way of praising the availability of goat cheese won tons late at night, chatting instead of shouting, and not having to crowd-surf to get her lychee martini. "The music isn't always what I like to listen to, but it's interesting and different."

The green room's bridal party seemed to particularly dig a brief remixed spin of En Vogue's "Hold On" after a run of mood-tripping neo-soul and R&B. I appreciated a brief detour of dub reggae and classic dancehall topped with a rocksteady cherry of The Specials' "A Message To You Rudy."

Next door in the den, a quartet of boys and girls messed around on the room's large opium bed while others in the room stole glances at random acts of cool manga weirdness. An oblivious solitary dancer, meanwhile, let Yer Man's sultry mix of disco-twisted house "Weird Therapy" — and its whacked-out, repetitive mantra "It doesn't mean that I'm weird/ It doesn't mean I need to be in therapy" — wash over her like aural rain.

The bridal party and Lam were gone when I returned to the Green Room. But a George Clinton funk attack kept me company until I exited to scribble notes as an early morning roadwork project rumbled near Bethel Street.

Scanning Electr01yfe's MySpace page at work a couple of days later I stumbled upon a blog entry that could serve as the weekly's unofficial raison d'etre: "Under the radar and off the charts."

Suits my Saturday night fine if it suits them.

Reach Derek Paiva at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com.