If you think post-Libertines Britrock reached its nadir with Razorlight, be grateful you've yet to hear the contributions of the Fratellis. To hear "Flathead" (easier now that it's featured in the latest iPod commercials) is to discover new depths. No victory is too easy for Barry, Jon, and Mince. (Yes, Mince.) They get loaded. They have a good time with girls apparently all too willing to oblige ("Hers is a tonic and mine is a gin"). And for a soundtrack, well... they offer a mess of ba-da-bas, Kooks-y jangle, and Borrell tonsillitis. The track is triumphant without any genuine triumph-- miles from the hard-won pleasures of "Time for Heroes" and "Don't Look Back Into the Sun." In fact, the celebratory tone is so at odds with the emptiness that lingers at song's end, you can only hope they really are as ignorant as they seem. We should all be so lucky.

It's songs like this (and furniture brands like Ikea) that make us think everything from Sweden is adorable and fragile. Loney, Dear, like close companions Peter Bjorn and John, have a symmetrical attention to detail that makes each song crisp, but just a little hard to touch.

So tiny and delicate you could carry it in cupped hands, "I Am John" is a sweet introduction to Loney, Dear and their upcoming Sub Pop debut, Loney, Noir. Everything is on the quiet: brushed drumbeats, glockenspiel tings, just a touch of farty, under-the-table bass. "Johnny and I we got lost tonight/ We got carried away," sings Loney, Dear's Emil Svanängen, a man who sounds as if he's never gotten carried away a night in his life (or has a friend named Johnny). But "I Am John" develops stronger legs three-quarters of the way through, when Svanängen piles on layers and layers of voices, until a mini-chorus backs the opening line into believability.

Some records sound timeless by sounding dated. This first offering from the forthcoming Matador debut by Melbourne-based noisemakers Love of Diagrams first appeared on the Australian band's 2003 EP, The Target Is You. But if this track wasn't recorded between '77 and '81, it could have been recorded any year after.

Not to say that "No Way Out" is imitative-- the band sounds like they're trying to force their way out of the song. The prickly guitar lines feel their way down dark hallways, stumbling over furniture and tripping over floorboards. The boy/girl vocals (each line is sung by bassist Luke Horton, then repeated by guitarist Antonia Sellbach) are tentative, unsteady, and flat as hell, but still manage moments of expression: "I got a weak heart," Horton uptones, leading Sellbach to respond in a dead, defeated drone before she suddenly shouts "I can, I can, I can!" like she's just found the doorknob.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's self-released second album, Some Loud Thunder, comes out January 30, but so far there's been little news surrounding its release: In early October, the band revealed to Pitchfork that they'd been recording with renowned producer Dave Fridmann, then waited until just before Christmas to release two free MP3s. A month later, the band seems to be (perhaps intentionally) keeping a lower profile.

"Love Song No. 7", one of the two MP3s released in support of the new album, is markedly more focused on sound and atmosphere than the tight, concise pop songs of their debut.  It's also their moodiest track to date. Centering around a doleful piano, crooning, backwards accordion, and, between instrumental passages, frontman Alec Ounsworth's reedy, watery vocals, "Love Song No. 7" definitely makes Fridmann's presence known.  The track should also help listeners tune out the David Byrne and Gordon Gano comparisons-- here, Ounsworth's stretched, nasally vowels and undulations sound more like Supertramp's Roger Hodgson. (Okay, take that how you will.)

The mood grows eerier as the song's repetitions become increasingly determined: the piano mediates on the same chords, and a sickly whistle sounds the melody in the background. As a lead single, it's an unexpected choice, but a fitting one for a band for whom presentation has never been a strong suit: I mean, they did call themselves Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

"Mr. Me Too"'s original beat is just too much of a "Drop It Like It's Hot" retread to be truly great, but the Thornton brothers' taunts do become kind of funny when Pharrell explains "why I call you 'Me Too."" The explanation is necessary, of course, but hearing it more than once is not, so enterprising Soul Sides reader Z.A.K. is wise to forgo the Neptunes' verses entirely on this remix, which lays Clipse's vocals over the music of Lee Fields' "Honey Dove".

The juxtaposition of the gently strummed guitar, laid-back horns, and slow-motion strings of Field's track makes Pharrell's verses even more irrelevant, as Z.A.K. perfectly distills the flaunted prosperity of the song's lyrics into a mood that permeates the entire track. This is yacht rap, the sound of Clipse contented and reaping the spoils. Where the original worked hard to play up the envy of others, the remix actually makes Malice and Pusha T sound enviable, like they're gonna have a few Tom Collinses and hit the golf course after the studio. You wouldn't have thought the Neptunes needed a lesson in keeping things simple, but Z.A.K. is more effective in three minutes than Williams and Hugo are in nearly four.

Marcin Czubala may be a relatively new face in techno, but his career in classical music goes back to the early 90s and even includes a performance with the legendary Krysztof Penderecki. For Berlin-based Mobilee's first release of 07, Czibula brings two cuts of minimal techno that seldom allow melody to rear its head. "Super Conny" is the pick of the two, with buzzing synths and a stuttering electro flavor. "Starliner" is housier and extremely close to a standard Mobilee style, which we can forgive them for given that it's still only January. A good, if not mindblowing 12".

!!!'s prodigiously hyphenated genre exercises-- how does "electro-acoustic no-wave post-disco-funk" suit you?-- have always been audacious, if spotty. "Heart of Hearts", though, distills everything good about !!! (relentless propulsion, lean syncopation, and dynamic convulsions) into a mighty six-minute tsunami that cascades in perpetuity. Darkly glittering scraps of guitar and concussive noises gather before quickly bursting into a wiry disco pulse, arcing between chewy bass and smacking drums. The scatty, svelte vocals are all vapid dance-floor solidarity, fleshing out the glass-brick funk.

Having established an impregnable architecture, !!! get down to the fine details: A mean, circuit-bent-sounding squelch livens up the chorus; a panting refrain of "heart of" that suddenly sounds like a libidinous "harder"; a false ending and subsequent explosion of whooshing guitar trails and roars, pierced by simmering percussion and lockstep bass. High-wire tension, telegraphic urgency, twisting and braiding: This one's an unstoppable juggernaut.

UK label Aus has become noteworthy recently, largely due to the success of tech-house wizards My My's Songs for the Gentle LP, released on Playhouse in 2006. Here, Englishman Lee Jones-- one third of My My-- brings more U.S. house sounds back into the Euro scene. With its deep washes and twinkling synths, "There Comes a Time" almost sounds like Larry Heard or Moodymann. But the real treat is on the flip, as renowned Lindstrøm collaborator Prins Thomas takes another step towards techno with a jaw-dropping 12-minute re-work that sounds like My Bloody Valentine remixing Henrik Schwarz-- it's not to be missed.

Unfortunately for Will Saul and Tam Cooper, the most exciting thing about this 12-inch (for many) will be the inclusion of the elusive Konrad Black as a remixer. Black has just a handful of releases to his name, but most are as good as this minimal house music gets. So forget the pleasant lushness of the original and Sideshow's mix, and head straight for another skulking piece of gothic horror house from Konrad. Mr. Black is back (again), you just wish he'd stop going away.

A year ago, the third season of "Making the Band" proved how-- with the right producers, stylists, dance instructor, and house-mother-- Diddy could build a commercially successful pop item out of absolutely anything. Presumably, that was the point (Combs is a narcissist, but he's endearingly up front about it). Given that he's already pulled back the curtain on his artifice (not that there was much of a curtain to pull), it's always kind of weird to see him subject his own persona to the same processes. It's like watching Dr. 90210 give himself a facelift. Diddy albums aren't just soul-numbing documentations of what Nas means when he says hip-hop is dead. They're also personality tests that determine how you respond to pop culture, as well as explorations into the parameters of what the term "artist" means in the producer's era of postmodern pop.

Take this song, for example. Presented as Diddy featuring Keyshia Cole, and not vice-versa (because after all, it's his name on the album), Combs lays in the background wheezing pathetically over a modest, barebones club-beat, while Cole admirably and gamely struts her stuff all over the rest of the track. This all goes on, repetitively, for about four minutes. The final two minutes are dedicated to a mock phone call from Diddy to his woman: "You gotta stop playin' with a nigga's feelings," Diddy reproaches. "You know how much I love you… But those couple of seconds when I couldn't get in touch with you… I was ready to come over and shoot that muthafucka up. Fucking dumb bitch!" He's kidding, of course. Whatever this is-- a harmless, club-ready dance track, another ridiculous bit of meta-pop commentary, or an insipid piece of crap--- the joke, as always, is on us.

When David Karsten Daniels sings about collecting dandelions in his ball hat, I think of little leagues. I still remember playing baseball when I was eight, especially that night I stood staring at my glove. It didn’t blink. I remember the first baseman shrieking by, sprinting into my territory and screaming something about waking up. I turned to see him fling the ball to the waiting second baseman, then trot past me with his disdain dripping like summer sweat. Some second grader had turned a triple off of a piddly blooper, and I knew my brother was right: I was only going to get close to Canseco and McGwire in my dreams.

Built over a perfect color-show and guitar-and-drum bounce, "American Pastime's" image gets me. Not everyone was a right-field klutz. Still, when he belts “I’m not cut out for the major leagues,” the metaphor becomes a long-distance shot: he needs commiseration for his imperfect game. Misery loves company, even if it comes with minor-league ambitions.

"I'm Shinin'" mirrors the same laid-back minimalism of the Pack's cult hit "Vans". But while the sneaker song's flow matched the quiet, slow confidence of its near-transparent beat, "I'm Shinin'" leans too hard on the drums, and the rhythm can't support it. Turning a pitch knob on a hearing-test tone doesn't make the song's hook any catchier, and the rip on Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" (a Pack member howls the title line) isn't doing MJ's proud legacy any favors.

The video begins with a quick shot of a Roland amp, even though this beat couldn't blow out a Macbook. The video's requisite party scene makes more sense, even if it can't redeem the song's flimsiness. Sure, this track's more suited to the club than "Vans" (which isn't a reflection on quality so much as the BPM), but the best part of this (track, video, and all) is getting to see what each member of the Pack's wearing. It's style over style. Watch the video instead.

Fall Out Boy are only four albums into their career, but they exist in a climate so temperamental they already feel weary and primed for self-parody. In the video for their new single "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race", the band use characters from all their past videos, plus a few rock clichés (trashing hotel rooms, visiting the Playboy mansion, recording with a hip-hop producer) for a satire that's unusually self-aware for an emo band-- even one as good-humored and self-effacing as this.

But how’s the single? As self-referential as the video, but without the sense of humor. Incorporating an ill-advised drum machine for its Rob Thomas/Santana-meets-Timberlake verses and pre-chorus, the lyrics reach for more than they can grasp: "I am an arms dealer/ Fitting you with weapons in the form of words" explains the song title, not the metaphor. The stomp of the pre-chorus, and the full-bore, blown-out pop/punk chorus both go a long way towards redeeming that, but there's a telling line at the end of the second chorus-- "Bandwagon's full. Please, catch another"-- implying Fall Out Boy may have become their own guilty pleasure.

Hard to say what’s more shocking-- that an artist would dare to mimic the inscrutable racket of the Fall or that one would even want to here at the start of 2007. "En Papier" contains multitudes in its four minutes, as hexed as it is perverted by its source material. It's all here: the churlish sing-speak, the paradoxically onerous pop, the way the song veers, stops, rewinds. While "En Papier" is unmistakably studied in execution, its skillful, calculated rendering suggests that These New Puritans' apprenticeship may be just that. The song's inherent pretensions hint at a band with the desire to break free of familiar confines, if not necessarily the resolve, although even that will likely come in time. For now, These New Puritans will have to settle for impeccable thievery.

"For The Trees" is laptop pop that really wants to be a party jam. Australia's Faux Pas (aka Tim Shiel) cuts-and-pastes big samples with delicately rendered instrumentation. The track is under four minutes long, but packs in a lot-- matador-calling horn samples, something that's probably filed as "official cowbell rhythm track," and three-note keyboard lines. Each mini-hook and variation sounds instantly familiar, whether it's a sample or Shiels himself. He cribs the opening Rhodes line from "I Heard It Through The Grapevine", transposing it up to meet the same key as the song's ringing bell clips, but never abuses it-- covered by three other instruments and samples, it's rendered into pleasant scenery. 

San Francisco's esoteric lords of tape hiss seem to have cornered the market in were-cow vocals: where other noise dudes wail or scream or howl, the Skaters low like cattle, moo-ing into overdriven signal chains until their looped chants smear to infinity. Their sunburnt approach to fidelity is a thing of beauty, but what makes this track so exceptional is the way that their own technique undoes itself in the final 30 seconds, as they lurch abruptly from a wall of overdriven scree into a whisper-soft, clean recording of the "raw" vocal source from which that wall has been built. It's a simple switcheroo that's quietly stunning.