OnMilwaukee.com's Julie Lawrence selects her picks for this week's mixtape

On its first album, The Sounds declared that it was not "Living in America" -- although the Swedish rock band sure sounded a lot like any number of 1980s American new wave bands.

Nearly three years later the band has managed to pack even more '80s energy into its sophomore effort. Playing out more like a tribute album to an obviously influential era for the band, "Dying to Say This to You," (New Line) is like a collection of greatest hits, each song as synth-driven and catchy as the last.

The epitome of the dance punk attitude, leading lady Maja Ivarsson is tough stuff with a candy-coated shell and, oddly enough, bares a striking resemblance to a young Debbie Harry. In front of snappy keyboards, tight guitar chops and playful beats, her sassy sweet vocals are as commanding as they were the first go 'round, but this time seem to dance their way through bubble gum anthems of love's bittersweet joyride. But even with her guard down, Ivarsson still gives the impression she could kick your ass. Hey, the band may sound like Blondie, but to its credit, it plays the part well.

With 2003's "Dear Catastrophe Waitress," Belle & Sebastian hinted at a happier, if not downright perky, presence lingering beneath the wooly layer of demure it wore so well for years.

Now it's official. If Belle & Sebastian harbor any of the delicate coyness that inhabited "Tigermilk" or "The Boy With The Arab Strap," the group is doing its damnedest to suppress it with its sixth release. Luckily for us, it has proven itself a wise decision. "The Life Pursuit" is a bold venture into previously uncharted territory for the band, while maintaining a stronghold on their signature cynicism.

A logical progression forward, "The Life Pursuit" (Matador) exhibits a newfound vitality and willingness to dabble in various genres -- folk, pop, blues -- within one album. Fresh off the heels of the new release, Belle & Sebastian take the stage at the Riverside Theater on March 11 in what promises to be a stylishly colorful, if not energetic, musical affair.

As what came as something of a surprise, Jenny Lewis' first solo album (she's the lead singer of indie rock act Rilo Kiley) is decidedly a country album -- or, at the very least, an album indebted to country music. Teaming up with gospel singers the Watson Twins, Lewis's "Rabbit Fur Coat" is saturated with enough lady-like twang to associate her with soulful legends like Patsy Cline or Loretta Lynn.

It is, however, her darker lyrical choices and dropping of the occasional f-bomb that gives her a bit of an edge over her predecessors. Her album is both intense and full of frailty, both secular, as Lewis claims in interview after interview, as well as largely about the search for god.

She may have strapped on her cowgirl boots for this album, but she hasn't completely abandoned her indie rock roots. "Rabbit Fur Coat" arrives with contributions from Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst (on whose label, Team Love, the record is released) and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard, to whom Lewis lent her vocals on his Postal Service side project.

Any J.D. Salinger fan would be drawn to an album called "With Love and Squalor" (Virgin) -- perhaps with the expectation of finding lyrics riddled with strategically placed intellectual, if not slightly pompous, literary references and subtle snobbery. Admittedly, Salinger fans might have rather enjoyed that, and We Are Scientists did in fact name its debut album after his short story "For Esme -- With Love and Squalor."

But instead, the Brooklyn-based rock trio has created something of a feverishly poppy, hooky and highly danceable party album, if you will, carried by alcohol-induced contemplations and witty non-sequitors in the Americanized vein of Franz Ferdinand. More fun than it is anything meaningful, "With Love and Squalor" is a consistently tight rock album with a sense of humor that rises to the top as quite the charmer.

Amid the ever-dramatic, gloomy-with-a-bright-side sentiment of Arab Strap's frontman Aidan Moffat is something that distinguishes its latest CD, "The Last Romance," from just about every other work the band's released in the last decade -- energy.

Die hard fans, take heart. Although the album starts out with some of the fastest tempos ever produced by the duo, "The Last Romance" wraps up as wistfully as anything the world's come to expect from the Scottish post-folk duo.

Moffat explores his world with rousing honesty in the very saccharine, seven-minute "There Is No Ending," which is actually the last song on the version released in the UK. The U.S. version, released by Transdreamer, adds "El Paso Song" and "Go Back to the Sea."

Prefuse 73 (aka Scott Herren) is quick to the punch, hot on the beats and a mix master of sonic samples -- in which his latest release, "Security Screenings," is swimming. Whether his music is complemented by an audio bleep emitted from an electronic device as it gets ran over by a car, sounds from a game of ping-pong, or just a succulent bass line, his sound naturally evolves while never forgetting to give credit to the musical era that inspires him. The name Prefuse 73, he says, comes from his devotion to pre-fusion jazz circa '73.

For the majority of his new album, each 2- to 3-minute track is followed by quick stints of blended, shaken, and pureed beats, samples, and bleeps -- sort of the snap, crackle, pop of electronica engaging hip hop in a cell phone conversation with bad reception. Perhaps this is what's called "post-hip hop?"