When not lost in naked optimism and irritatingly peppy good cheer ("Every note is an unfinished song / We're all in a cosmic sing-along" goes one sickly sweet number), Cryptacize artfully navigate the dusty corners of naive rock, a semi-dormant genre whose line runs from the Velvet Underground through Beat Happening and the Juno soundtrack.

Concept albums are synonymous with excess: For every masterwork like Tommy or Styx's Kilroy Was Here (no, really), three bombastic epics bludgeon you into a stupor. Cases in point: The Smashing Pumpkins' Machina/The Machines of God, the fourth side of The Wall, and the entire Jethro Tull catalog.

The Teenagers want to fuck -- then cry about it. And the French trio try to have it both ways on their debut, a spacey mélange of lo-fi guitar tones and cold dance grooves. Reality Check vacillates between Serge Gainsbourg's slutty cool and Jonathan Richman's childlike poignance: spoken-word vamps, seedy narratives, the occasional declaration of real emotion.

In Carl Craig's nearly 20-year career turning out remixes for LCD Soundsystem, Deee-Lite, Goldfrapp, Depeche Mode, and others, he's logged almost as many clients as aliases (69, BFC, Innerzone Orchestra, Psyche, Tres Demented, and Paperclip People, to name a few).

Prefer Fountains of Wayne circa Utopia Parkway? Tired of waiting for the Rentals' follow-up to Seven More Minutes? Laced with brainy raps, cooing backing vocals, and a keen attention to melancholy melodic detail, Why?

After debuting with two alluringly cryptic art-punk records in the early 2000s, Clinic fell into a creative rut, experimenting with new textures but basically rewriting the same tunes.