It took Built to Spill to tell a post-Nirvana rock underground consumed with its own angst that There's Nothing Wrong With Love. Rock radio stations didn't listen, nu-metal happened, and now there are a lot fewer rock radio stations. Well, there's nothing wrong with catchy songs or comprehensible lyrics, either. On recent single "Knots", as heard in this simple video, Pete & the Pirates don't take tuneful UK punk-pop anywhere it hasn't already gone in the past three decades, but they know their way around bright, hummable guitar hooks and buoyant, ramshackle choruses. As with former tourmates the WinterKids, whose single "Tape It" was a personal 2007 favorite, this Reading, England quintet make direct, unpretentious guitar pop evocative of sunny afternoons wasted worrying about the opposite sex. With the splashing hi-hats of Franz Ferdinand or Bloc Party, and the multi-part harmonies of the Futureheads, P&TP sing lyrics that stand out for their simplicity: "Sometimes I can't see your face/ It makes me sad." If all that sounds not just unpretentious but unremarkable, too, then that's where the single falls slightly short of some of its predecessors. But there's always a chance this bunch could be perfect from now on.

Bonus! P&TP have also recorded this track live for Black Cab Sessions:

[from Little Death; out now on Stolen Recordings]

In this artfully garish lo-fi video collage, Brooklyn dub/noise/whatsa outfit Excepter make killing people seem kind of fun, or at least something enjoyable to chant about. The track was here in January; JFR/Fingered directed the clip.

The Olds lived up (or down) to their name on their previous album, the tired Drag It Up, and Rhett Miller's solo career was a nonstarter, but they sound rejuvenated on "Dance with Me", their best single in years. Maybe it's the location: The band recorded their seventh album, Blame It on Gravity (forthcoming on New West in May, with an atrocious album cover), in their hometown of Dallas and corralled local producer/performer Salim Nourallah to produce. Their stomachs full of barbecue brisket and Shiner Bock, the band returns to the dustier sound of Wreck Your Life on "Dance with Me", which sports Ken Bethea's flamenco-inspired guitar work and Miller's smart-ass lyrics about a girl with "your flip-flop smile and your big blue eyes on vacation." She's dancing to a bar band playing "Everybody Wants You", perhaps one drink away from Girls Gone Wild, as Miller sings the chorus as a conspiracy: "Do? You? Want? To? Dance? With? Me?" There is a sense of danger in Miller's lyrics, which has been missing in the Old 97s' music since at least Satellite Rides. It may only be the danger of next-morning regrets, but the band make them sound big as Texas.

Stream:> The Old 97s: "Dance With Me"
[from Blame It on Gravity; due 05/18/08 from New West]

"We're going to play the better part of our set for you," says Brian Borcherdt from Toronto's Holy Fuck to start this performance on Dublab. Beginning with "Pulse" and then to "Milkshake" and on through other tunes up to "Lovely Allen", they offer a pretty convincing display of krautrock-informed instrumental rock that ebbs and flows seamlessly like a good mixtape.

MP3/Stream:> Holy Fuck: Live on Dublab

Speaking of "Lovely Allen", a video for the track showing the band in action emerged around the time of SXSW and it's worth a look:

[LP is out now on Young Turks/Beggars]

It's back to the future all over again for the 1981 sports car with a stainless steel exterior and futuristic gull-wing doors. Pealing out hot on the skid marks of Neon Neon's John DeLorean-themed, Pitchfork-recommended Stainless Style comes Delorean, an electro-pop group from Spain who I'm told turned heads at SXSW like a flux capacitator-equipped DMC-12 hitting 88 mph. How fitting, then, that their sleek dance remix of the newest single by London/Paris trio the Teenagers opens with the ticking of a clock. Especially because the best songs on the Teenagers' 2008 debut, Reality Check, are so focused on those fleeting moments when sex, celebrity, and youth all converge. Andy Warhol begins bombing in 15 minutes.

Like previous singles "Homecoming", "Starlett Johansson", and "Fuck Nicole", the Teenagers' original version of "Love No" sugarcoats an apparently sincere sleaziness with New Order dance-pop guitars, radio-friendly compression and hooks, and painfully familiar pop-culture references. Imagine if Art Brut and the Tough Alliance formed a band, then started speak-singing about MySpace in a French akhzent to pick up zee girls. When the Teenagers say they're not in love (with you), they do a brutal impression of the object of their non-affection, linking pepperoni pizza, Showgirls, and red-rimmed eyes (from spending so much time on the computer ... "or maybe it's the-- whatever") with a rapper-like casualness. Then they turn the tables on their imagined interlocutor: "Are you in love?" Delorean's remix drags the song from the bedroom to the club. With a steady house beat, glistening synth arpeggios, and chopped-up vocals, the track becomes less about witty put-downs than unanswered questions: Are you in love? No? Great, then let's dance. Do you think you're better off alone?

MP3:> The Teenagers: "Love No (Delorean Remix)"
[from the "Love No" single; out now on XL and original track from Reality Check; out now on XL/Merok]

After climbing out from the wreckage of Jonathan Fire*eater for two albums of stirring, U2-esque rock, the Walkmen have begun to sound like a group remembering there's something valuable in ruined fragments. The New York band's last two albums have been messy, occasionally frustrating works, but they've also shown a deep appreciation for the greats that came before. The voice of frontman Hamilton Leithauser took on the nasal whine of Bob Dylan on the New York band's last album of original material, 2006's A Hundred Miles Off, while Pussy Cats later that year was a true-to-the-original cover of Harry Nilsson's 1974 album with John Lennon. So it's a logical step for Leithauser & co. to revisit the catalog of another songwriting legend, Leonard Cohen, as they do in their new Daytrotter session.

One of the Walkmen's four Cohen covers is not like the others. While "The Old Revolution", "Lady Midnight", and "Tonight Will Be Fine" all appeared on Cohen's 1969 Songs From a Room, "Passing Through" is a rarity from 1973 live album Live Songs; it was also a cover even when Cohen did it, a re-arrangement of a folk standard originally composed by Dick Blakeslee. Like the Walkmen's past covers, their "Passing Through" is a mostly faithful rendition, Leithauser impressively adopting Cohen's careful baritone while imbuing it with a bit of his own throaty rasp. The accompaniment is an electric guitar with alternating bass notes, joined by simple bass guitar and drums, with the band singing along on the choruses. As for the song itself, it begins some 2,000 years ago last Friday-- at Calvary for the Crucifixion-- and moves through biblical and American legends for an unflinching look at mankind's best hopes, the history that has again and again doomed them, and the temporariness of the whole shebang anyway. Heavy stuff for a Monday, but it's an effective rendition of a powerful old folk song.

MP3/Stream:> The Walkmen: "Passing Through" (Daytrotter Session)
[original track from Live Songs; out now on Sony]

Lupe Fiasco's sharply-observed tale of a young rapper and his motivations is given a video that follows the narrative to the word. The action takes place in Houston's Fifth Ward; watch for cameos from area luminaries like Bun B, Paul Wall, Slim Thug, and Willie D. Dr. Teeth (not that one, this one) directs. (via Subterranean)

[from The Cool; out now on 1st & 15th/Atlantic]

"Choose your own adventure," New York boy-girl duo HeartsRevolution declare on "C.Y.O.A.". Rather than going off and re-reading Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? (there are only so many possible endings), Chicago DJs/remixers Flosstradamus appear to have taken that advice to heart for HeartsRevolution's forthcoming C.Y.O.A. EP on IHeartComix. The original "C.Y.O.A." had a slinky stomp of its own, but Flosstradamus' fine remix extends the song with the megaclub strobe-light synths and hip-hop strut of Flosstradamus pals like A-Trak and Kid Sister. Flosstradamus don't so much smooth out the HeartsRevolution version's punk-minded rough edges as pile all the jagged synths and distorted shouts into a sleek, house-informed Trojan Horse-- adding some breathy quotes from Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It" for good measure. The political gets downplayed (like that drawn-out "No more wars" battle cry) in favor of the more generalized sort of angst a roomful of revelers can probably agree on, like, "We're all just lost/ Don't know which way to go." Well, it wouldn't be such an adventure if we knew where we were going.

MP3:> HeartsRevolution: "CYOA (Flosstadamus RMX)"
[from the C.Y.O.A. EP; due 04/15/08 on IHeartComix]

Haven't heard all of Jay Reatard's upcoming series of 7" singles yet, but it should be steady going for the Memphis punk rocker by the sounds of "Always Wanting More". The blazing two-minute song is actually set to be on the series' third installment, but Matador has already put the track online as part of the venerable indie label's annual Intended Play sampler, now in convenient digital form. As with Reatard's songs from 2006's shoulda-been Best New Music contender Blood Visions, there's not much going on here that couldn't have been done in 1976, with the pinched vocals and relationship-oriented anguish of bands like the Buzzcocks just one too-easy point of comparison. But that doesn't mean the song can't course with a punk-pop jolt of its own. The secret is in the structure: A section with melodic lead guitar fills and tambourines leads to the brittle, trebly chords of the verses, a distorted chug on the prechorus ("You could never see"), and then explodes into a shout-along chorus: "You're such a useless bore/ And you're always wanting more." No filler. The tinny lo-fi sound had me leaning forward, but it's the songcraft that leaves me wanting, well ... surely just one more listen wouldn't hurt.

MP3:> Jay Reatard: "Always Wanting More"
[from the "Always Wanting More" 7"; due 06/17/08 on Matador]

Norwegian singer Ida Maria has an abiding interest in the Big Guy Upstairs. She shouted him down on the rapturously frenetic "Oh My God", and now she's followed it up with "Stella", a surprisingly tender tale about god giving the entire world to "a forty-three-year-old hooker from downtown" in exchange for a night in her arms. The video, which features the exceptionally charismatic Ida Maria relegated to the supporting role of a waitress, is very, very literal.

Nothing goes with weighty, genre-curious corpse songs quite like cartoons, right? Directed by animator Mike L. Mayfield ("Family Guy", "American Dad"), the video for Why?'s "Song of the Sad Assassin", from the indie hip-hop group's Pitchfork-recommended Alopecia, isn't exactly Saturday morning fare, although I guess you could still scarf down your Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs in front of it. "We lifted the body from the water like a gown/ You took off your bra to wrap the wound," Yoni Wolf sings to an accompaniment of a couple of repeated piano notes and a clunking beat. When his melody rises with guitar and (synth?) strings to close the verse, it could almost be a Cloud Cult song, except Wolf is singing about sucking the marrow out and raping the hollow bones. Mayfield's images of musical skeletons, pieces of clothing rising up from the water, and a bearded Wolf himself add a nicely apropos video element. The animated clip for Aesop Rock's "None Shall Pass" achieved a similar effect for me, but the visuals here are less busy, both graphically and in terms of metaphorical possibilities, so it's easier to focus on the song. "Billy the Kid did what he did and he died," Wolf repeats at the end, at a martial clip emphasized by the drums. Billy, you're so far away from home.

[from Alopecia; out now on Anticon]

For once, I think it's fair to call it a comeback. Lionel Richie keyboard ballad "Hello" hit #1 in the U.S. in 1984 on the strength of its creepy romantic longing and a video I could practically recreate just by feel. Then came the Starburst commercial, the spot on VH1's "Awesomely Bad" list, and way out of left field (or, more specifically, Sweden), "A Paw in My Face" by the Field, which forced snobs of all stripes to deal with the fact that they had just enjoyed a track built around a snippet from a goddamn Lionel Richie song. All that was left was the post-grunge "American Idol" cover inspired by Incubus. Richie must be dancing on the ceiling right about now.

Illinois-based husband-wife duo Oh Astro showed up in Forkcast last year for their slightly Field-like "Journey to the Center", so it shouldn't be a surprise that these Girl Talk labelmates share an inspiration. "Hello Fuji Boy", as its title hints, is built around nothing more than Richie's "Hello", Fujiya & Miyagi's "Ankle Injuries", and Hot Chip's "Boy From School". Sometimes it's easier to turn crap into gold than to improve upon near-perfection, so "Hello Fuji Boy" doesn't quite live up to two-thirds of its material (or "A Paw in My Face"), but anything built from those basic elements couldn't possibly suck. The video is a creative bit of re-appropriation as well, as clips from the first episode of 1970s children's TV show "The Lost Saucer" are put through a stuttering visual effect. Lionel, looks like you've made it! Oh wait, that was Barry Manilow.

[from Champions of Wonder; out now on Illegal Art]