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.

The first single from Mike Jones' second album repeats the agonies of his major-label premiere "Still Tippin'." Most of these concern his anxieties about wealth: For one, he reminds us again that, before finding success, he "used to get dissed" by women ("Back then hos didn't want me/ Now I'm hot, hos all on me"). There's a sting of pathos here, and in Jones' paranoia about the pack he runs with-- that "even back then all they did was pretend" ("A lot of homies/ Some friends and some phony"). He matches his baroque mood-- the ego, the materialism, and the acid of a high-school reject-turned-arriviste-- to a baroque score. Here, the laid-back austerity of Houston rap gives way to a rich, almost ecclesiastic pomp: pianos, violins, cathedral bells, even a children's choir. The drama is menacing, down to the chorus, as kids belt threats in sing-song harmony. Shorn of the genre's lively neighborhood scenes, slang, and sound, the narcissistic "Mr. Jones" paints not a three-dimensional hometown landscape, but a flat and strangely grim self-portrait.

Nearly every silver lining has a cloud on Paper Anniversary, the third album by Winnipeg, Manitoba singer/songwriter Christine Fellows. Its most cheerful song is its title track, which takes barely over a minute to celebrate love's quirks and acknowledge the ongoing learning process essential to even the most successful romantic relationships. Fellows' lyrics resemble the compact narratives of the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle, who happens to be her latest tourmate, or the Weakerthans' John K. Samson, who happens to be her husband. Her eccentric-but-conversational voice and staccato, slightly detuned piano help give the song a clinky homemade charm. "Whenever I wanna really wallow in sadness, I play Paper Anniversary and open up the fucking floodgates," Darnielle wrote recently on his blog's message board. Maybe so, but Fellows ends this one with a ray of cautious optimism: "There's no better time than the second time of anything/ With you."

Natasha's spirited "Hey Hey Hey" introduced us to her breathy, nimble falsetto, a midpoint between Ciara's wafting alto and Amerie's piercing delivery. "So Sick", her second single, bounces again from voice to voice, emotion to emotion, from the verses' piping ennui to the downtown, seen-it-all sass of the chorus and the maudlin glaze of the bridge. More like spectators than suitors, Clipse simply take it all in.

A drum machine patters along briskly before hardening into a bassline. "When you talk love," Malice warns on the first verse, "that's when I set you free." But Natasha, absorbed by self-regard ("You look so sick 'cause I'm lookin' so fit") and payback jabs ("You must be sick 'cause you didn't sign me"), brushes off the Thornton Brothers' bravado. Not even Pusha's blissfully abstract rhymes about pre-schoolers, hula-hoopers, and state troopers diverts her. Too busy preening, Natasha never engages the rap duo-- she's in her own world, and it's stark there, slipping above minimalism only for the chorus and the rapturous, Rhodes-spangled bridge. A little vulnerability could have brightened everything.

The first single from the new Johnny Marr-enhanced Modest Mouse is so radio-ready, you can almost hear the future Kidz Bop version echoing in the background, a children's chorus taking the place of the disco strings that swell behind Isaac Brock. "Dashboard"'s slinking string lines provide the song's most surprising touch-- though they echo Brock's melody, their fluidity sounds alien in Modest Mouse's world of clanking guitars and metronomic drumming. Those dead-stringed guitars and backbeats are odd, though-- drummer Jeremiah Green and new guitarist Johnny Marr made their names on complexity and trickiness, not fist-pumping. This could have been better if Brock had contrasted this uncomplicated, upbeat song with darker, troubling lyrics. Instead he sings, "The dashboard melted but we still have the radio," and I think this is a metaphor for, "we'll all float on ALRIGHT."

In Dreamgirls, "Listen"'s story is inspirational: a girl overcoming odds to become a woman, a pop star puppet animating herself in defiance of the mastermind producer who thinks he created her. But outside of its original context-- in a scene focused squarely on Beyoncé's character singing while staring down her soon-to-be-former man behind the boards-- the opening piano chords, soft cymbal rolls, and her carefully hushed vocals make her sound about as inspired as typical Disney soundtrack fare.

It’s not until the drums come in and she picks up the volume that Beyoncé hits her stride, and when she belts out the chorus, the inspiration is real, tangible, and contagious. If the song’s dynamics are supposed to parallel the character’s own rise in confidence, it works better in theory than in execution, but by the time she reaches the song's climax, Beyoncé is climbing the scale with an intensity that matches the cymbal-crashing drama around her. That's when "Listen" nears "I Will Always Love You" heights of singing-in-the-shower perfection. It's a moment that belongs in a musical-- a shame it's in such a disappointing one.

Though the original video is a forgettable montage of movie clips, the second is less cheesy, and comes closer to capturing the power of the original scene. It features the unhinged look Beyoncé perfected in the "Ring the Alarm" video. Someone give her a made-for-TV movie already.

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Bryan Scary's debut album rocks the candy shop, pillaging it for as many audio confections as possible. "The Ceiling on the Wall" is among the sweetest, opening with a choir of multi-tracked Bryans repeating the word "marbles" and jumping right to the chorus-- one of them, that is. There are enough catchy sections here for about four songs, and it's easy to see how he fell in with Apollo Sunshine's Jeremy Black, who contributes drums on this track-- the only instrument Scary doesn't play. The other chorus comes from a different world, romantic but fantastical, in a Michel Gondry/Terry Gilliam way. The lyrics are about as flung-together as the music, joining words like puzzle pieces that don't quite fit: "If I could take you to the mountains of the moon/ Hiding underneath the noonday gloom/ You wouldn't have to see me fall here daily/ Don't let the ceiling on the wall derail me." It's adventurous, fully fleshed, and catchy as hell-- as indie pop should be.

This is one of two remixes that Thom Yorke made available on the XL Recordings website for just a week in December. Labelmates Various remove the cascading, respiratory piano on which his voice floated in the original version. With the piano gone, and a scattered, Richard-D-Jamesian beat in its place, Yorke's voice regains a semblance of the percussive jitteriness absent from other post-Kid A releases.

Other differences: the chorus, which pulls back just shy of catharsis on the original, gets a slight nudge forward by Various, who clip it to make Yorke sound as if he's yelling into a fan. Still, the drilling beat, while intricate, overpowers the rest of the track. No denying Yorke sounds best when he sounds as if he's drowning; here he's just drowned out.

Originally released as part of a split 12" on FatCat, "Badminton Girl" is tacked on as a bonus track to the Endless Summer reissue. The track is certainly in line with Fennesz's work just after the turn of the millennium, as he cycles through chords that in another era would serve as the foundation for a rock song, but here are pounded into shapes imaginable only through software. There's a melancholy tug as overtones hover and cluster into something resembling bells, while fat pipes of guitar distortion are sucked through chutes too narrow, stuttering hesitantly before rushing into the darkness in steady waves. A sketch, for sure, and not quite worthy of the multi-layered complexity of the album it's now paired with, but still demonstrative of the man's finely tuned ear and instantly identifiable sound.

Turns out Tuvan throat singers and the blues make a pretty good pair. Hazmat Modine specializes in a kind of generalized roots music that takes from pretty much any roots it sees fit, be they American, Romany, Bulgarian, African or Central Asian, throwing tubas and harmonicas at cultural walls until they collapse. "Everybody Loves You" is a blues crawl built on a lurching rhythm that falls about halfway between Tom Waits and Ali Farka Touré. The members of Huun Huur Tu chant the chorus, then back Wade Schuman's brokedown vocal with rich throat drones and the buzzing overtones that distinguish Tuvan music. Harmonicas wheeze on the sidelines, mingling with Tuvan lutes, while Joe Daley's nimbly played tuba takes the bassline. It's true world music, weird and wonderful to the last note.