Klaxons' pretense is far more interesting than they're letting on with "Gravity's Rainbow", their first U.S. single after a run of UK hype. Repping for KLF (who repped for Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson [who repped for Thomas Pynchon]), these Burroughs-named Londoners rocketed to relative fame via NME's specious tag as the "new rave." If you try, you might hear the pace and rhythm of the Prodigy's "One Love", but mostly the song's just hypertensive Bloc Party with forlorn lyrics giving this modern love a half-life of infinity. Drums hurtle, guitars thrust, voices soar, etc. Something about a "Madcap Medusa" and a "rubix groom hoom" too. Not a bad plan to drop New Order in favor of retro-futurism, I'm just not sure it needs its own genre just yet.

While it may not be the tone-poem for slovenly crack dealers that I'd hoped it was, "Ross Ross Ross" definitely has some leftover chunks of a symphony stuck in its grill, and for roughly three minutes SebastiAn flosses them with clipped guitar riffs and jabbing bass hits. But just like a slab of clove jammed in a hot date's teeth can put you at ease, the sweeping disco strings on "Ross" add that little bit of vulnerability lacking in some of the more hyped Ed Banger records. Minus those strings, this is just a scatterbrained heavy electro track with clever programming and restless beat changes, but the strings cut through the frenzy with sharp analog swipes, pulling the song in and out of some cheesy disco past that most would think to avoid. Think of it as a young John Travolta, dressed in white, dancing with a rough Gerard Depardieu as Christopher Columbus, only less fucking hot.

Have no doubt that Para One has a great sense of humor, for he fucks this song up properly. Vegastar, for those fortunate enough not to know, is the worst rock band ever, but in France, they are mentioned in the same bated breath as woman-panters My Chemical Romance and Panic! at the Disco. You want to know what "Elle Blesse" means? "She Injures." Para One takes "her" cue and pummels the Vega boys into acid-glitched house hysterics for nearly two minutes before yanking them up by the armpits, dusting the shame off their tiny t-shirts and dropping ecstacy in their drinks. What ensues for the final two minutes is what Cobrasnake pics are made of: sweaty, blacked-out pogoing with boy-girls and girl-women wearing so many fucking pink bandanas you think you've died and gone to grit Valhalla.

This is like that time you first took your dad in something-- checkers, wrestling, drinking, whatever. Mr. Oizo hit #1 seven years ago with an ugly bit of squelch called "Flat Beat" that no doubt made its way to the ears of the boys in Justice, whose own brand of brain-damaged electro is currently lighting hipster hearts aflame. I'm sure you can guess that Oizo's "Nazis" was no flower in the gunbarrel, but the remix takes what was a grating glitch-to-my-loo and makes it sound like you're being ground between the teeth of a party monster. Even more than their "Waters of Nazareth", Justice's remix is as close as I've heard to whatever dance-punk is supposed to be. Technically, you could do dance-type things to it-– pump your hips, wave your hands over your head–- but the decayed-to-tatters synth and disorienting drum hits are much better suited to clobbering some doofus with a shoulder charge and pouring beer over your head. I guess this is what happens to kids who listen to Air growing up.

If the new hipster club music is all about jacking other people's shit, Das Glow is Napoleon. As far as I can tell, this is snap ghettotech B'more acid Miami house by a French kid with a German fetish, but that's probably so off the mark that I'm pissing my Depends in terms of knowing what's cool. Even so, it does have bits of all those things without coming off like Girl Talk gone wild, and when the track moves from dropping marbles down your ear canals to swabbing them with stun darts, it's a pretty fun experience considering the discomfort. Don't expect much melody-– actually, don't expect any melody. "Weiss Gaz" carries a tune like a dial-up modem. But if you're looking for something to put on that ripster mix between the Spankrock remix and "Do It To It", this probably wouldn't be a bad look.

Recorded while on tour in Australia, "L. Wells" could have easily been an afterthought left to fill out one of those weird two-part British singles; instead, the band was confident enough in its charm to issue it as a second A on a double A-side. It's no wonder, as the track signals a further escape from the crowded new-new-wave scene toward something a bit less spastic and a little more Kinks-ish. The proper-name subject matter doesn't hurt the comparison-- L. is for Lindsey, a crimson-haired friend-of-the-band (not like that, ya perv) who gets a sunny diorama of a song written in her honor. With martial drums and a slow version of the riff from "Matinee", the Ferds pile on glockenspiel, organ, and harmonies to create their most loosely wound piece of pop to date. Maybe it's just the lingering effects of the Southern Hemisphere, but a little tan looks good on them.

Field Music, three guys with longtime ties to Maxïmo and Futureheads, play remix politics here, moving the kinetics out of the equation and add a bit of McCartney blah-soul to this mid-album weeper. Only, the blah is for blame and Paul Smith's conscience is heavy shit. "I always said you could rely on me/ Now I realize I was wrong." Can't get over how stripped down this comes off the original. The rockish urgency, Maxïmo's bread and butter, is sucked clean out. But the upswing is no more Go4 chit-chat, and good for Smith for re-recording the vocals on this one; it's now a classy bit of Diane Warren-as-nervy-Brit pop. In this case, schmaltz works.

This just in (seriously): Ripping Ian Curtis is the new ripping Eddie Vedder, or at least Editors hope so. A Creed-sized paycheck hinges on it. True, everyone wins in an Editors dude for Scott Stapp trade, but we're only upgrading Stone Age songwriting to Bronze. In the verses, these post-punk savages wrest our beloved, delicate Television riffs away and bang them out like rugs, then someone drops a boulder on the synth keys for a heavy-handed chorus of regret and feelings and stuff. Adding to the clumsiness, Editors shoehorn in the requisite sad sack of sad, though vague lyrics don't reveal what exactly crawled up their asses. Fortunately for these guys, they're getting a lob over the plate here. At best "Munich" recalls an awesome Interpol concert you saw, at worst the band don't heed its own advice: "People are fragile things/...Be careful what you put them through."

So obviously they're sterilized, but sterile too? Actually, not enough. Spazz-rock contortionists and gyroscope addicts may like their dance-punk rough. I prefer frigid. Either way, the two kinds don't cohabit kindly. Colossal bass counters a blatant Byrne bite, but don't hate the band for the singer's bromide. Brickier than their typically malformed shits, "Algorithm of Desire" wrings the porn-bass sweat rag for all its drippings. This is crank the low-end and sit on the speaker music.

Thing is, Byrne and sex don't mesh, unless, like the strangulated guitars, you dig autoerotic asphyxiation. Softer and swunger, we'd catch ESG's trailblaze; Tussle would get jealous. Targeting Heads was the trickier move though. These vox need art-pop straitjacketing, not echo chamber swirlies.

"Each of us is special in our own unique way." Should've told me in '89! Sad and creepy trad-rockers have been trying to extract gravitas from platitude for ages, but they're sad and creepy trad-rockers. Then the Flaming Lips tried with "Do You Realize" and its Seussian dreamscapes, but that song was too much melancholy, and Coyne was too much creepy. Clor don't futz with emotional dynamics. "Outlines" earns its PopText, offering Charleston chewy synths, gum bubbly vox, and assorted pilferages from the five-cent jar: bells, claps, synthesized bells, synthesized claps. Therapied-out cynics will dig the subversive sex lines-- "One way or another gonna get into your outline/ Gonna get in from the outside/ You never know, it might just feel right"-- knowing your kids are learning well.

Put down your indie Sparknotes, folks, this track requires little work. As its title suggests, Vek's newest single draws directly from Another Green World's planetary synths and Remain in Light's bottom-heavy herky-jerk, namely "Once In a Lifetime". And you may tell yourself, "This is not my Talking Heads!", but throughout the song Vek gradually wheedles his way from post-punk poseur to garage-rock revivalist du joir.

How he does it, I don't know. There are gushy lyrics ("Everything I thought I ought to know about you has vanished/ Like the snow when the sun comes out"), no chorus, and his affected vocals totally cop the Killers, which should be a deal-breaker for elitist hype. Instead, Vek only boosts indie solidarity by showing he loves dance-rock but is not in love with it. He's too detached for a fist-pumping refrain, and too confident to dissemble his egregious influences. And forget the half-hatched poetics: The guy undercuts all schmaltz with a debonair "so to speak," cuing scenesters everywhere to drop guard and breathe out

After This Island I kept my distance. Not a tough thing to do actually, especially when even Le Tigre's biggest uppers-- one of whom called me the "harlequin baby of Pitchfork reviewers, and retarded"-- eventually conceded the record was total fucking garbage. Annie still had the heart to beat through the remixes though, which is how I heard this one (first released late '04, apparently, then again in the UK this summer) and why I'm mere syllables from crediting Junior Senior with a minor miracle. The song's diamond, that moody bronx bassline, desperately needed new shelter, so thankfully Junior Senior's frill-less chicken-scratch disco-punk has quite the soft spot for the bum-bum-bum. But let's cut the shit: Do you think, as I do, that Ms. Bergen only likes "Nanny" because it rhymes with "Annie"?