Monday night brought a delightful break in the monotony of avant-garde atrocities and holiday-themed shows: On a whim, I attended the latest installment of Nautilus Music Theater’s Rough Cuts, a series of informal performances of musical theater works-in-progress.

But this program was entirely different from the other Rough Cuts I’ve seen. It paired the hipster scribes and songwriters of the Electric Arc Radio Show  with professionally trained music-theater veterans — most notably, the wonderfully talented Kersten Rodau and Andrea Leap. (Full disclosure: Leap is also a close friend, but she’s someone I came to admire, in part, because of her enormous singing and performance chops.)

Now, I missed the full staging of Electric Arc Radio’s premiere musical, "Don’t Crush Our Heart!" (Bygones — that happened in September.) But Monday night’s bite-sized excerpt of the musical’s tongue-in-cheek twee tunes (twee primer here) about rainbows and puppies didn’t just warm my frozen toes — it melted my own holiday-hardened heart and put a smile on my face to match. Worth noting: Electric Arc’s resident songwriter David Salmela composed these catchy tunes — and he’s a wonderful pop stylist. Best of all, in this context, Salmela’s ditties get sung by professional vocalists. If you want cause to crack a grin, then don’t miss tonight’s final Electric Arc-Nautilus mash-up!

"Don’t Crush Our Heart!" Tonight only, Dec. 16. Open Eye Figure Theater, 506 E. 24th St., Minneapolis. Tickets: $5 (includes milk and cookies at intermission).