Deacon, MGMT take stage during D.C.’s Kia Soul Collective

Soon after he moved to Baltimore with group of his college pals in 2004, electronic musician Dan Deacon began putting on shows wherever he could.

A cavernous, industrial space — like the spot on New York Avenue in Kenilworth temporarily (we presume) dubbed the Kia Soul Collective Warehouse, where he’ll perform for free Saturday night — is the natural habitat for his euphoric concerts-as-dance-parties. Deacon positions himself and his array of gear smack in the center of the pulsating mass of bodies, leading the audience in dance-offs, foot races and whatever other gameship strikes his prankish fancy.

Deacon was one of the founding members of Wham City, a Baltimore art collective whose events overlapped with his seminal performances. Two albums of absurdist psych-pop, 2007’s “Spider-Man of the Rings” and this year’s “Bromst,” both earned strong notices on the taste-making music site Pitchfork. Last November, he played one of the Hirshhorn Museum’s popular After Hours events. The scale of Deacon’s production rose with his profile: For his “Bromst” tour, which wrapped up earlier this year, he hit the road with a 15-piece ensemble.

His upcoming string of dates will find the 28-year-old musician once again performing solo. Saturday’s D.C. gig is part of a weekend-long promotion sponsored by the South Korean automaker Kia, which will also feature sets by ubiquitous D.C. rapper Wale and the indie band of the moment MGMT. Given his avowed do-it-yourself ethos and the fact that it’s been only a few years since he was throwing dance parties he concedes were not always strictly, like, legal, Deacon seems an unlikely participant in a corporate promotion like this. But he says he didn’t hesitate when the offer came.

“[The sponsor] had a nice offer for a support band,” he says. “Normally when you get a show like this, they don’t want to pay for that. They said I could pick whatever opener I wanted, and I chose my good friends — and one of my favorite bands — The Creepers.” Without this show, he likely wouldn’t have been able to play D.C. until early next year.

While Saturday’s gig will be what he calls “the explosion show” — the sort of egalitarian rave on which he built his reputation — he says the music he’s writing now incorporates more acoustic sounds and that he’d alter the live experience to offer more nuance, too.

“It would be nice to have the show be more varied and not just be a dance party,” he says. “I’m trying to put together a sit-down set, or just a more chilled-out set. I just want to figure out a way to introduce it without having it be too jarring of a change.”

Deacon is known for waggishly appropriating bits of sonic detritus — Woody Woodpecker’s laugh; every track of Aerosmith’s 1987 “Permanent Vacation” album (played simultaneously). But he’s also a musician trained at the conservatory at the State University of New York, Purchase.

“Ninety-five percent of the music is non-appropriated,” which is to say original, he says. “I did an interview where someone said, ‘The bass line in “Woof Woof” — where did you find that sample?’ It’s not a sample. It’s a bass.”