head on straight. Barnburners such as "Ladies and Gentlemen" and "You Owe Me an IOU" are all built around the same elements -- meaty backbeats, spare guitar and piano riffs, some la-la-las, and Bays' wailed neuroses -- but Hot Hot Heat deliver them with so much unabashed flair that even a guitar solo would seem out of place. The album's most exhilarating moment is the bridge in "Running Out of Time," a series of half-time breakdowns that ends with Bays mumbling in a rhythmic slur that's part sassy rock-dude rap and part 3 a.m. plea -- before a desperate chorus bowls him over.

Bays' voice can be cloying, but it's hard to imagine a more laid-back singer handling these ostentatious pop songs. The combo of panache, sarcasm and uncertainty Bays works up on "Pickin' It Up" -- a heartfelt number set during the "forty-eighth hour of a two-day night" -- is a better encapsulation of hipster love affairs than even the Strokes' oversexed ennui. Other bands may get more obsessive fans, but Hot Hot Heat, the likable party band of the new New Wave, deserve at least a whiskey-soused hip shake.