Alec Ounsworth’s voice first found an audience last summer, when his band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah became the subject of massive internet hype and won a legion of young, excited fans across the country. Up to that point, Ounsworth had mostly played around Brooklyn, where he lives. All that changed when CYHSY did a North American tour in the fall of 2005, following it up with an international tour that started in January and continues through the end of summer. During a short break, Ounsworth’s Philadelphia-based side project, Flashy Python and the Body Snatchers, played a pair of low-key sets at Joe’s Pub on Wednesday night.

At the early show, Ounsworth began the set alone, playing through a handful of songs with only his acoustic guitar. The result recalled Neil Young in sound, John Steinbeck in lyrical subject matter, and a world-weary 14-year old Swiss boy in singing style thanks to Ounsworth’s voice, which cracks at the high notes and bounds around the octave like a yodeler. This portion of the show contained some of the most beautiful melodies played all evening. Ounsworth’s best songs start small and end overwhelmingly, the vocal lines soaring and the accompaniment – sometimes harmonica, sometimes violin – swelling behind him.

Flashy Python and the Body Snatchers play pre-war country plain and simple, their style and the world they sing about ripped straight from the songbooks of old-timers such as Hank Williams. If the music ended up sounding somewhat modern and avantgarde, that was because we were in New York City, not Alabama. (In fact, it’s as though all that time touring in big cities during the past year made Ounsworth want to be a country boy.) From the five people on stage, it was never clear which member was supposed to be “Flashy Python.”

Most entertaining was the young musicians’ earnestness in imitating early country, and their fans’ willingness to entertain their indie rock heroes’ whims.There is something jarring about a 20-something such as Ounsworth lamenting that an empty bottle “sure ain’t worth a damn.” But then again, the Decemberists mysteriously pretend to be 19th-century pirates.

But Ounsworth has a clear talent for song writing, and this came through despite the shift in musical style. One of the best songs he played Wednesday night, “Dee, Oh Dee,” evoked sad-eyed, small-town hope. “It was never enough, it was always too much,” Mr. Ounsworth sang during the majestic chorus, first by himself, and later in the set, in a well-timed reprise, with his bandmates backing him up.

Mr. Ounsworth is looking forward to growing old, it seems. Watching him onstage, singing lines that could have been said by characters from “Cannery Row” or “Tortilla Flat,” it seems that Mr. Ounsworth is looking forward to growing old. One hopes, for his sake, that he gets to spend those years in the country.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah will play Rumsey Playfield, Central Park, in late September.