Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Never content to stay in one musical place for very long, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs take their restlessness to the limit on It's Blitz! -- and wind up making some of their most contented-sounding songs along the way. As if to prove one more time that they're not just the architects of New York's early-2000s rock renaissance, Karen O, Nick Zinner, and Brian Chase strip away the guitars and explosive dynamics of their early work even more thoroughly on these songs than they did on Show Your Bones. In their place are shiny keyboards, synthetic sounds galore, and a very different kind of energy powering this music than any of their previous work. It's Blitz!'s images of a woman's hand bursting an egg and fleshy tomatoes and mushrooms spread across an otherwise empty pizza box are surprising, immediate, and strangely sensual, and that goes double for the actual music.