When New Zealand's Shocking Pinks emerged in 2004, they sounded like they belonged on DFA. Debut album Dance the Dance Electric took up arms in the disco-punk revolution the label had declared a couple of years earlier with near-perfect 12"'s like the Rapture's "House of Jealous Lovers" and LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge". Except Shocking Pinks' one-man-band man Nick Harte couldn't be pigeonholed as easily as most of his cowbell-wielding peers. Harte's interests were more eclectic, his lyrics bittersweet. Party-starters aren't supposed to have, like, feelings.

Beyond its high standard of quality, Shocking Pinks' first DFA release might seem a less obvious fit for the label. And not just because Harte's project shares its name with Neil Young's 1980s rockabilly sidemen. A 17-track, 45-minute compilation cherrypicked from Shocking Pinks' two 2005 albums for New Zealand's legendary Flying Nun imprint (Mathematical Warfare and Infinity Land), Shocking Pinks veers even further from early-2000s Brooklyn for an emotionally vulnerable highlight reel of scruffy Jesus and Mary Chain dream-pop, ecstatic My Bloody Valentine haze, droning C-86 confessionals, and bedroom New Order bass lines. Oh yeah, and cowbell.

Harte is the ex-drummer for the Brunettes, who made their promising Sub Pop debut earlier this year. Those Kiwi indie-poppers go for lavish studio orchestration, but Shocking Pinks adhere to the lo-fi principles of hugely influential Flying Nun bands the Clean and Tall Dwarfs. Harte's vocals are whispery and fragile, delivered with a slight lisp. He plays all the instruments himself: The tragic synths on "End of the World" or "The Narrator", the electric-guitar squall of "Blonde Haired Girl" or Psychocandy descendant "I Want U Back", the distant acoustic strums over the fuzzed-out anomie of "Victims", the prominent Peter Hook bass of "This Aching Deal". You can hear strings squeaking, fingers sliding-- the homemade-pop legacy of Flying Nun's early-1980s Dunedin Sound left to 1990s indie groups like Pavement or Boyracer.

Most of all, you can hear the drums. Jealous love song "Emily" pans them over to the left, where Harte's cymbal-heavy clatter stands opposite skuzzy bass, elongated synths, and chiming percussion. In fact, an emphasis on rhythm and percussive elements seems to be the one place where Shocking Pinks intersect with other DFA acts. "SmokeScreen" is the most overt dance-punk nod here; Harte's clipped speak-singing ("Just take the medicine") and cowbell ruckus could fit easily onto LCD songs like "Us V. Them". Original New York dance-punks ESG or Liquid Liquid might recognize the funky breaks beneath ominous, synth-led "Yes! No!" or buzzing hi-hat exercise "Cutout".

Shocking Pinks is ragged and emotive where the DFA's other recent full-length release, UK post-punk duo Prinzhorn Dance School's quite good self-titled debut, is terse and mechanical. "I love you when you're happy, I love when you're sad/ But I'd rather be your retard babe than be your motherfucking dad/ Telling you what to do," Harte sings with hissing breaths on the album's heroin-clouded standout, "How Am I Not Myself?". On midtempo lo-fi rocker "Second Hand Girl", Harte imagines a tearful encounter on a woman's doorstep: "You let them go like falling stars, passing through the years." Elliott Smith used to juxtapose pop sentimentality and fucked-up romantic bitterness like this, too.

A couple of tracks are basically just interludes-- instrumentals "Wake Up" and "23"-- and one or two, specifically "Girl on the Northern Line" and "Jealousy", are more languid and meandering than the best songs here. Even so, Shocking Pinks' DFA debut is an auspicious one by a young artist who knows as much about loneliness as he does noisy pop classics. The finale, Harte's cover of Arthur Russell's "You Can Make Me Feel Bad", reworks the Calling Out of Context original's dive-bombing cello as naïve, evocative guitar-pop. Its title could be Shocking Pinks' songwriting manifesto. His heartache, our pleasure.