The band is in place, in front of shelves stacked with tchotchkes, behind a normal-size desk, under maximum-efficiency lighting. Despite being in Washington, D.C., in the offices of National Public Radio, amidst the tentacles of American soft power, and it being noon on a Monday, the band is dressed for bohemia: floral and Spanish print, a beret and a newsboy cap, five out of seven in all black. Two of the musicians are wearing sunglasses indoors. The keyboardist is wearing an untucked guayabera. The Mekons, still handsome in their respective fashions but being of a certain age, look like day drinkers at the anarchist convention. And not just because, before they took the Tiny Desk “stage,” at 11:55 a.m., they all did a shot of Jameson.

The short set begins with “Last Dance,” an affirmational and hopeful do-si-do about not ever getting what you want in life. It’s off of Fear and Whiskey, an album the band recorded 40 years prior, about nine years after Tom Greenhalgh and Jon Langford, two students at University of Leeds, formed the band.