Pretty Girls Make Graves make a fuss when they're likened to Sleater-Kinney and At the Drive-In, but they're fooling themselves if they can't see the connections. Andrea Zollo is a punky bruiser of a vocalist, shaking the living daylights out of syllables as if she were Corin Tucker's kid sis, and her bandmates – hailing from, among other acts, the Murder City Devils and Kill Sadie – pummel out one of today's more impressive post-hardcore roars. Still, for all the emo-explosive promise of last year's self-titled EP and full-length Good Health, Pretty Girls' great moments were too sporadic to measure up to the consistently stellar heights of their aforementioned influences.

Their second album, on the other hand, marks the Seattle band's first leap toward true greatness. Produced by Phil Ek (Modest Mouse, Built to Spill), The New Romance is a relentlessly anthemic album full of heady hooks and punky instrumental precision that finally capture the band's fiery, fuck-all live energy. It's Zollo, however, who gives the songs their immense emotional heft, drawing on medical terminology – cancers, remedies, medications – to dissect matters of the heart with only her razor-sharp howl. Sound a little like a certain other band's excellent, medical-themed second album? Pretty Girls better start taking those Sleater-Kinney comparisons as compliments. Pretty Girls Make Graves play Thurs/11, Amoeba Music, S.F. (415) 831-1200. Fri/12, Cafe du Nord, S.F. (415) 861-5016. (Jimmy Draper)

Avishai Cohen
Lyla (RazDaz)

Euro crits always have to name things – like, say, this new nu jazz thing – that we Americans in our lowbrow bliss simply ignore. Even worse, they always force artists to be danceable, assuring quick critical burnout. (Yes, the adjective acid is now banned from the canon.) Meanwhile, yet another generation of young turks – folks like Jason Moran and Avishai Cohen – arrives and quietly changes the game, while America awaits another PBS special it didn't know it needed to sort it all out.

So people will call this stuff what they will. I call it brilliant. Like Moran, Cohen is a big-eared eclecticist. On Lyla, his fifth album as a leader, Cohen covers Dr. Dre's "The Watcher" and the Beatles' "Come Together," duets with Chick Corea, and breaks some beats on "Handsonit" and probably some strings and sticks on the frenetic polyrhythms of "The Evolving Etude." West African highlife, Brazilian samba, Middle Eastern pop, Led Zep rock, and Chicago post-rock all flow through the compositions but never threaten to reduce them to designer lifestyle stuff. Cohen's band and music do multiculti the way Don Cherry would have loved it – with passionate intensity and unfettered emotion.

Perhaps it's Cohen's experience as an Israeli immigrant, escaping war to save his art, that gives his music its empathy and depth. "Handsonit" refuses the studied cynicism of so much pseudo-jazz, coming out of double-time stuttering beats into slow waves of rich harmony, and goes on to celebrate New York energy in a notably unironic, unnostalgic way. "How Long" is dedicated to the memory of a soldier friend: "How long before we can admit to ourselves we were wrong?" The title track, an ode to a sleepless night, builds from a gorgeous electric piano line to a rumbling bass line before falling off to dreaming. Lyla is an album that devotes itself to hope. It's art that needs no name. Avishai Cohen plays Tues/16, Yoshi's, Oakl. (510) 238-9200. (Jeff Chang)

Noiseshaper
The Signal (Different Drummer)

The Signal was a surprise from the first track, "All a Dem Da Do," a lilting summer song with a smooth, almost pop, guitar hook. I guess I just wasn't expecting such a sing-along melody, but it instantly put a smile on my lips and made me think about heading to the beach, or at least the backyard, for some sun and a frosty beverage. The rest of the album was no different, for the most part delivering a solidly individual take on dub and reggae, with an emphasis on uplifting melodies and riffs.

Birmingham, U.K.'s Different Drummer has been supplying essential, open-minded dub to the world from the likes of Rocker's Hi-Fi and Groove Corporation since 1992. Along the way it's forged strong relations in Germany, home to one of Europe's strongest followings of dub, reggae, and dancehall, and to Axel Hirn and Flo Fleischmann, a.k.a. Noiseshaper. On The Signal, Hirn and Fleischmann revel in the open-border approach to genre that has made Germany such a fertile spot for dub-derived music, not only crafting bouncy reggae gems like "The Signal" and spacey dub doses such as "Good Enough Part 2" but also turning their hand to deep house. If anyone has any lingering doubts about the links between dub and house, one listen to how "Sunstarson" and "You Take Control" nestle comfortably next to the rest of the album should put them to rest. With the able help of vocalists like Juggla and Blood & Fire's MC Spiky Tee, Noiseshaper remind us that experimentation is the true heart of dub. (Peter Nicholson)

Quasi
Hot Shit! (Touch and Go)

The last album Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss of Quasi made ended on an afterthought – cowbells ringing and the upbeat liner notes inscription "Rock & roll can never die." The first track on Hot Shit!, their sixth and latest, comes on like another epilogue, or a Go Away sign on a teenager's bedroom door. The whole song is a slow buildup to Coomes's announcement that he's just come back to say good-bye. That's a downer, but it's nothing new for Quasi, who on a good day produce enough bile-scented cynicism and harmonious disgust to convince a village of indie rockers the world might just as well end right now.

It was always easy enough to grasp that Coomes – who does most of the songwriting and vocals – thought making one's way in the world involved wading through many, many piles of hot shit, but here he goes so far as to name a few names. The straightest shots are fired during a pleasant interlude at the end of "White Devil's Dream" in which he matter-of-factly yet feelingly tells various members of the current administration – plus all other Bushes – to get fucked.