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KEEPING UP with Joan Wasser can be a challenge, because the former Dambuilders violinist tends to sport a new look and personality whenever she forms a new band. In the Dambuilders, her fiery playing was matched by her flaming red (or purple) hair and exuberant stage presence. She then became a somber, dressed-down indie-rocker in Black Beetle (who included members of her late boyfriend Jeff Buckley’s back-up group). Now she’s unveiled her first proper solo project, Joan As Police Woman, who celebrated the release of their first EP on the bill with Saperstein at T.T.’s. Again she’s taken on a new musical style — elegant, cabaret-flavored pop — and changed her look. She arrived in Cambridge from her new home in NYC sporting a Bowie-esque blond shag, wearing a slinky cocktail dress, and playing piano and guitar. The EP, which includes fellow ex-Dambuilder Dave Derby on bass, is available from her Web site, www.joanaspolicewoman.com.

At T.T.’s, she drew some of double-takes from old fans who didn’t realize it was Wasser when the band first took the stage. "I like diversity in everything," she explained earlier that evening. "I’ve always changed the way I look — once when I was young, I wore nothing but red for a year. I used to demand to dress myself; fortunately, I had very liberal and understanding parents. It’s not on purpose, I just like dressing up, and I like to observe the way people act in light of what’s going on."

Anyone who was around in the ’70s will recognize the source of her current band name — the Angie Dickinson TV series Police Woman. But Wasser is more serious when she acknowledges that her recent changes had a lot to do with her mourning for Buckley and eventual healing. "Our language of expression is music, and when we did Black Beetle, we were expressing the terrible feelings that we had. When that band ended, I decided I was done feeling terrible. It was a dark moment in my life, and now I’m feeling aware of all the beautiful things around me."

Along with Wasser’s forceful singing, which first showed up in just a couple of Dambuilders songs, the big surprise about her Police Woman project is that there’s no violin. Although she’s lately played violin in the studio with everyone from Juliana Hatfield to Sheryl Crow to current dance-pop darlings the Scissor Sisters, it’s not currently a part of the Police Woman project. "I can’t accompany myself on violin," she explains. "I feel that I have two voices: my violin voice and my singing voice. If I put two voices out there at once, that’s just too much."

Joan As Police Woman have changed a bit since their inception. When Wasser introduced the project last summer, it was a piano/drums duet with more of a cabaret flavor (and a Dresden Dolls resemblance, though Wasser hadn’t heard that group yet). At T.T.’s, she’d added a bassist and mainly moved to guitar, so it rocked a little more. Still, it’s easily the softest and prettiest music she’s yet made. "I was just trying to make the most beautiful thing I could. I think that beauty is the finest manifestation of any emotion you can name — anger, love, lust, anything. So I’m still a punk-rocker, but this is my new definition of punk. I’m gonna wreck you with beauty, no screaming and no yelling. That would be too obvious. Beauty is the new punk."

GOOD THINGS invariably start happening to a band as soon as they decide to break up. In the Pills’ case, the pop quartet’s third album, A Fistful of Pills (Primary), was already earning them the usual good reviews and cult-hero status. Then they went to England, where the press proved wild about them and large indie labels started talking about publishing deals; "There were drunken conversations that we need to follow up," bassist/singer Corin Ashley notes. What’s more, they got to play a pub in Swindon, home of their collective hero, XTC’s Andy Partridge, where a pretty young thing started giving them looks and singing along with their tunes. "She said to me, ‘I read that you like XTC,’ " Ashley recalls. "Then she said, ‘That’s my father’s band.’ " Sure enough, Holly Partridge put Ashley in touch with her dad for an hour-long phone chat after the gig. "He was great, and he made two demands: that I send him some CDs, and that I keep the band off his daughter."

The Pills are still breaking up, but only because singer/guitarist Dave Thompson is following his wife to a new job in Seattle. And they wrapped it up this past weekend with a well-attended show at the Middle East, where all six past and present Pills played as much of the repertoire as could fit into one set. Opening the show with a stripped-down (solo plus tapes and drummer) set of largely new material, songwriter Bleu even said that the Pills were one of the first Boston bands he really loved. So it’s no surprise that Ashley’s holding out hope for a fast reunion. "We have Pills on each coast now. And we’re holding them in reserve just in case."