Jangly, catchy riffs. Yearning melodies. Rhythms designed for dancing. Three bands — Floater Verses, Toy Cities, and Los Shadows — deployed all three elements to great effect at Cafe Nine Wednesday night, adding up to one of the poppiest nights the club on State and Crown has booked in recent memory.Up first was the New Haven-area Floater Verses — Marcos on vocals and guitar, Amar on guitar, Andrew on bass, and Chris on drums — playing what Andrew said was the band’s second gig ever. It didn’t show. Floater Verses, according to their own description, drawing inspiration from hardcore, emo, and grunge, charged out of the gate hard, a wall of distortion over a pounding beat, and dove straight into its second song without missing a beat. Marcos’s impassioned vocals were matched by tricky, energetic guitar work from him and Amar, while the rhythm unit of Andrew and Chris was precise and full of seething energy. Floater Verses built its set up into a big, loud sound that grabbed and held the audience, who gave hearty cheers at the end of every song.“Thank you guys all for coming out tonight. It really means a lot,” Andrew said, sounding absolutely sincere. Marcos mentioned that the band didn’t have merchandise or recorded music out yet, but it was coming. In the meantime, it was clear, the band’s live show would more than suffice.With Floater Verses setting the tone for the evening, the New Haven and Brooklyn-based Toy Cities took Cafe Nine’s stage by storm, with a torrent of high-energy originals that partook of the post-punk new wave of the 1980s, but with songwriting moves that felt up to the minute. Childhood friends — Mike on guitar, Mith on bass, Suneel on synth, and Nick on drums — who formed the band in 2013, Toy Cities delivered driving drums and pulsing bass beneath lush, atmospheric guitar and synth, creating a big, spacious sound for Mike’s plaintive vocals. “You guys are sick, man!” someone yelled from the audience in between songs.“I love it! Keep laying it on me.”“That’s all the encouragement I needed,” Mike replied. The crowd had grown to a healthy size, and Toy Cities unfurled hook after catchy hook and strong melodies that kept people applauding throughout the set.Closing out the night was Los Shadows — Andy Saldana on vocals and guitar, Pepe Gonzalez on guitar and keys, Mark Bullard on drums, and Xavier Prieto on bass — on tour from San Diego, Ca. Their camaraderie showed before they even began playing. ​“This is the furthest we’ve ever been in the United States,” Saldana said. Without dropping a beat, Gonzalez added, ​“we’ve been on the road for three weeks. What day is it?”Los Shadows proved the poppiest band yet of the three. Where Floater Verses had a harder sound, and even Toy Cities’s most frenetic songs were tinged with melancholy, Los Shadows, despite the band’s name, dived straight into a sunnier sound, with riff after riff from Saldana and Gonzalez, commanding vocals from Saldana, and, it turned out, irresistibly danceable rhythm from Bullard and Prieto. The crowd by then was a little smaller, but the ones who stayed didn’t seem ready to go home, and more than made up for the decreased size with increased enthusiasm.“Thank you!’ Saldana said after a particularly hearty cheer.“Thank you,” someone in the audience answered back.Halfway through its set, Los Shadows added a distinct ranchera flavor to its pop music mix. If they were testing the waters with the audience, the energetic response felt like a green light, and from there, Los Shadows began mixing even more Latin elements into the sound. The audience was ready for it. A young woman got up to dance and turned out looking for a partner and locked eyes with a young man, who initially seemed hesitant. She made a face. Come on, it said, dance. The young man got to his feet. Why fight it?