And the winner is...

They aren't the Go-Go's, but the four finalists for the Institute of Contemporary Art's James and Audrey Foster Prize have got the beat.

Kelly Sherman , Sheila Gallagher , Jane D. Marsching, and Rachel Perry Welty -- plus a couple of friends for moral support -- have gathered behind two microphones onstage at All Star Karaoke in the Milky Way Lounge . The Nickel and Dime Band strikes up "We Got the Beat."

Gallagher and Marsching are regulars in this irregular meeting of women artists at the Milky Way. Sculptor Deb Todd Wheeler started it with painters Hannah Barrett and Laurel Sparks more than a year ago. "We needed to do something ridiculous, and this was it," Wheeler explains. "We do it once in a while, when we're feeling grouchy."

Last week, the group -- which also includes new-media artist Teri Rueb and Raphaela Platow , curator at the Rose Art Museum -- showed up early at the Milky Way. Sherman and Welty were invited along.

"Our group is split between those who feel public humiliation is a good and humbling experience, and those who practice and prepare," Gallagher says over a cigarette out on the frosty sidewalk.

Inside, Sherman sparks a debate over which song the finalists will sing, bearing in mind that the winner of the $25,000 award is to be announced next week. Sherman, who has a boyfriend in New York and tentatively plans to move there later this year, nixes "Should I Stay or Should I Go." She proposes "Love Shack," but it's not in the Nickel and Dime repertoire.

"There's been so much emphasis on the competition," Sherman explains . She looks around the table. "This is where friends come and hang out. That's how I feel about these people. [The other finalists] are more my confidants than my competitors."

The four artists learned of their finalist status last March. Since then they've walked together through the hail of publicity that accompanied the opening of the new ICA and a solo show for each, up through March 11 . By now they're friends, not rivals.

They also had connections before the Foster Prize. Welty and Sherman have exhibited together. Gallagher and Welty have been in the same critique group for eight or nine years.

"And Jane is my best artist/mommy friend in Boston," Gallagher says of Marsching. The two have made a pact: If one of them wins, she'll take the other on a yoga/surfing retreat in Costa Rica. Both have kids, as does Welty. These three are in their late 30s and 40s. Sherman is 28.

A few days before karaoke night, the four meet for lunch over salmon salad and chocolate - chip cookies at the ICA to chat, laugh, and carp about the process.

"I wonder if it had been four male artists if it would be as cozy?" Gallagher asks.

The Foster Prize, formerly the ICA Artist Prize, has been awarded to Boston-area artists since 1999. Only two of the winners have been men. This time, says Carole Anne Meehan , the ICA/Vita Brevis project director, who oversees the Foster Prize process, there were 40 nominees, split evenly by gender.

The jury chose artists who make work that touches viewers, Meehan says. "These are not remote, esoteric themes. Faith, emotion, spiritual search -- they're themes that resonate with people."

Marsching's installation draws parallels between the faith and folly of 19th-century Arctic explorers, who brought theatrical costumes and props to the North Pole to help them survive the winter, and present-day faith in survival in the face of climate change. "These are places that are dying, facing the same kind of death explorers faced," she says.

Through a variety of media, including fresh flowers, smoke drawings, and video, Gallagher explores belief in what we cannot see. "What -- if any -- form can discussion of the sublime take place in?" she asks. "It just might be that dyed carnations do the trick."

Gallagher and Welty, whose works are the most visually lush, have been leading in the ICA's viewers' poll on who should win the prize. Welty's walls of twist-ties are funny, as is "Karaoke Wrong Number," a video in which she lip-synchs to messages left for other people on her answering machine.

"The leftovers or the overlooked interest me," she says. "Twenty years ago we didn't have voice mail. Now all this information that comes at us, people push a delete button and it's gone forever."

Sherman's exhibit includes printed copies of people's wish lists collected from the Internet, and "Family House," diagrammatic drawings of her childhood home. That piece, she says, "is very emotional content about the divorce of my parents, done in the most sterile, cold way possible."

Gallagher has a theory about why women have been so strongly represented in the Foster Prize competition, and it ties into the group's sense of camaraderie.

"New York is more commerce-driven, and I think it's difficult for a woman, especially a woman with a child, to be taken seriously," she says. "Boston is more conversation-driven, more academic. There is discussion [here] that we should make the work that we want.

"It's not like we're making work for the market, by any means," she cracks.

"Living here, you're making the choice to privilege life, not your career," adds Marsching.

Sherman concurs, despite her planned move. "There's a game of the art world I'm not interested in playing," she says.

Welty, the most retiring of the four, is happy to be among the finalists. "I think it could have been anybody," she says. "I feel lucky it was in this place at this time."

Luck can be double-edged. The artists say all the hoopla over the ICA's opening has been a mixed blessing.

"The phenomenon of the building, the craziness of that, the adulation of the building, the change in the Boston art scene has all been overwhelming," says Marsching. "We're just a small part of the carnival."

"I don't think every obscure German architecture magazine will cover the next Foster Prize," notes Gallagher. "Plus, there's so much focus on the prize. People come every day. They ask, 'When will it be announced?' It takes attention 100 percent away from the work."

For Gallagher, one of the most gratifying moments of the whole experience came when a bereavement group wandered into her show as she was tending her piece "Cumulonimbus," an array of fresh flowers depicting a cloud in the sky. They could see the cycle of life and death in her work; some wept.

That , she says, "clarified for me why I make art. The number of people seeing the work has been powerful, but my conversations, face to face, have been more important."

A few days later, all four, plus Wheeler and Sparks, take the stage at the Milky Way to belt out "We Got the Beat."

They do a serviceable job until a microphone sputters out. Only one mike -- the one Welty holds -- still works, and it's her voice, strong and clear, that carries out over the dance floor.

"Everybody get on your feet

"We know you can dance to the beat

"Jumpin', get down

"Round and round and round --

"We got it!"