CocoRosie are a sister act. One member of the duo has posed for Italian Vogue, and their image (complete with mascara mustaches and beauty marks) suggests a gender-bent Rasputina. The gimmicks don't stop there: an instrument that's part broken beatbox, part child's toy (featuring push-button animal noises from Old McDonald's farm) decorates the olden-days sound of their ballads. This would all be a put-on if they didn't know how to put together a song. A typical tune finds Sierra Cassady adopting a crone-Baez tone to cunningly ask the Virgin for a kiss; sister Bianca slurs the same words, adding melodic panache and a hint of blasphemy. "Oh Miss Madonna where you goin' after church / In the preacher's car?" she asks, adding a little promise-threat: "You know I won't tell nobody that you've been smokin' cigars."

Live, Bianca's languorous Janis-on-downers voice has a spiky vibrato that saws the air, while Sierra occasionally lets loose an operatic lament. The vocals on La maison de mon rêve are smallish in comparison, as if the sisters are trying to approximate the pinched, mono quality of old blues 78s played on a Victrola; each come-hither sounds like it was recorded while the singer was curled up beneath blankets. The album's highlights ("Good Friday," "Madonna") could almost qualify as timeless lullabies. Other moments are just plain silly. "Butterscotch" contains the line "Skittles are the rainbow."

The album closes with a strange circle of misunderstandings titled "Lyla." Faraway piano – not the only early-Cat Power touch here – accompanies Bianca as she sings about a creep on the street who tries to buy her, then attempts to guess where she's from. "Well, it's not Yugoslavia / It's not Yugoslavia at all," she yawns in response, stretching the vowel sounds despondently. The encounter reminds her of a movie about a prostitute who "ate McDonald's all day / And never had a chance to play." That character is probably Lilya (not Lyla), the Russian (not Yugoslavian) girl at the center of Lukas Moodysson's Lilya 4-Ever. But there's something right about the way "Lyla" gets those details wrong – each "mistake" adds another level of loneliness to a story that was lonesome to start with. CocoRosie play April 1, Ego Park, Oakl. (510) 823-8045; April 2, Bottom of the Hill, S.F. (415) 621-4455. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Various artists
Definitive Jux Presents 3 (Definitive Jux)

There's a line in You Got Served where Steve Harvey warns a bunch of young b-boys that in this tough world, "it's crew against crew." It's a horribly contrived statement – so fitting for the film – but in the case of hip-hop these days, Harvey's not all that wrong. Definitive Jux has been integral in proliferating the crew model of independent hip-hop labels, and its third compilation, Definitive Jux Presents 3, suggests the circle is as tight as ever. Its close-knit community-collective is a direct affront to the majors' idea of label support, as no Def Jux artist stands alone without the constant recognition of his label – yes, his label; still no girls allowed, it would seem.

However, over the past six years, Def Jux has become an underground force to contend with, defining the boundaries of hip-hop and definitely redrawing its demographic. And while it doesn't have any Vibe covers yet, it's also poised to be the underground crew that actually breaks through to mass appeal. Producers and MCs like Aesop Rock, Murs, and El-P – the label's man in charge – are centrists in the best way, eschewing the sometimes fey, indie whimsy of the backpacker genre in favor of hitting just a little bit harder while keeping their sound rough and uncluttered.

The label has always had a bit of a formula, and it's led members to much success on the indie circuit, but the attention has also made them a little uptight. Right down to the embedded piracy warnings on its promo CDs, Def Jux is a paranoid crew that knows it's on the verge of something big. During one of El-P and Cage's exchanges on "Oxycontin, Pt. 2," an exhilarating love song-addiction ode, El-P declares, "I think you're paranoid, dog," unconsciously acknowledging the potential for a tailspin. For us, however, it's invigorating to hear a collective force so urgently caught in the middle, with one eye on the prize and the other nervously looking over its shoulder. (Ken Taylor)

Dani Siciliano
Likes ... (K7)

Considering the legions of rock star offspring out there, you'd think we'd be inured to the ideas of nepotism and extrafriendly familial back-scratching. Yet we still can't help feeling a little bitter and resentful – maybe it's just the Sofia Coppola success syndrome, or perhaps it's simply the slowed, sour economy. In any case, being house experimentalist Matthew Herbert's old lady couldn't have hurt Dani Siciliano's lot in the world. But when it comes to strong recordings like Siciliano's solo debut, Likes …, who cares? Here she doesn't just step away from her role as her husband's accompanying vocalist on 1998's Around the House, 2001's Bodily Functions, and 2003's Goodbye Swingtime – she busts out like a cool little Seabiscuit raring to make a mark on her own.

Despite any imagined vocal limitations – Siciliano does calm and chill well but perhaps not hot and enraged – she's no homemaker, though she's done an admirable job bringing soulful voice to the ever morphing house of Herbert. The renovation projects there, however, are never done. Likes … demonstrates that it's easier to just pick and choose, give hubby the marching orders, and make a clear statement. And now that the vocalist's in charge, she looks for a simple, resonant tune to wrap herself in, and like many a good chanteuse or jazz combo, she finds Nirvana's new standard "Come As You Are" delivered with sultry aplomb and paced like a noir rumba, with guttural bass and Gil Evans-style horns. Is it successful? The plinging, tap dance-ready "Canes and Trains" and the almost-radio friendly percussionfest "Walk the Line" might be less inhibiting and a better fit for Siciliano, who sometimes comes off like a more soothing though less distinctive Laura Anderson. The lady likes her remodels pretty – as spacious as the wordless, trembling "One String," as womanly as the string-strafed soul pull-apart "She Say Cliché," and as elegant as the throbbing, impressionistic "Remember to Forget 1." Dani Siciliano performs March 19, Great American Music Hall, S.F. (415) 885-0750. (Kimberly Chun)

Greg Brown
Honey in the Lions Head (Trailer)

Honey in the Lions Head, with 10 traditional songs along with one by folk hero Greg Brown ("Ain't No One Like You") and another by Jim Garland ("I Don't Want Your Millions Mister"), is a kind of Brown family album (recorded for Iowa City label Trailer rather than for his own Red House) – or at least that's how it seems to me. Produced by Brown and his longtime associate, guitarist Bo Ramsey, it features familiar faces like Bob Black (banjo), Al Murphy (fiddle), and Rick Cicalo (bass), and vocalists Iris Dement (Brown's main squeeze) and daughters Pieta and Constie.

I don't think there's a song I've heard by Brown that I don't like, and there are no exceptions here. At the same time what provoked me most while listening to Honey was the absence (save one song) of Brown's songwriting. Without it, what we're left with is his somewhat melancholy interpretation of rich, beautifully played tunes that – taking nothing away from his deep, expressive baritone – could've been recorded by a dozen musicians without taking much away from us. What Brown offers is crystallized in his song "The Poet Game," when he writes, "I've watched my country turn into a coast to coast strip mall / And I've cried out in a song / If we can do all that in thirty years please tell me / Why does good change take so long." For more than 20 years, he has chronicled the final unraveling of the ties between a rural American past and whatever lies down the road, tempering any nostalgia with a steely assessment of our role in the road to ruin. It may be unfair, but hearing Brown's voice without his vision can be unsatisfying.

Brown is a singular talent who – with this – has given us 18 albums and countless performances; it's hard to begrudge him a pleasant, inconsequential moment like Honey every now and again. That said, it's been a while since he's recorded an album of new material – his last release before this was If I Had Known: Essential Recordings, 1980-1996. Brown is one of the best, and when I confess that I'm waiting anxiously for another album, I know I'm not alone. (J.H. Tompkins)

Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand (Domino)

This rock divide has got to end. You know what I mean – those clones that perpetuate the either/or, the smart versus the dumb, the royal us versus the lowly them. Here you have the haute uptown, snappy-prep-school-brats camp of the Strokes. There you have the rap-metal goth girls and baggy shorts-sporting soul-patch kids of Evanescence. Because who's to say one's better than the other? At this point listening to living-in-Glasgow-feeling-NYC Franz Ferdinand, you start to think both tribes tap equally unimaginative veins. At first glance, at first listen, the much hyped Franz – we'll call them that because F.F. sounds so damn familiar – seem like musical dead ringers for that HotHotChikChikRapStills Casablanca dude. It's the sound of young Brooklyn, with a few Left Coast exceptions and origins. It's the overcaffeinated, nervy, edgy, jittery, antsy sound of guitars in your pants. It's fried food, the stuff of facial tics, shaky feet, loose ends, restless minds, and maybe limited (musical) means. It's the sound of a generation ready to shake off these economic doldrums, nostalgia hounds, and historical precedents, yet somehow unable to. Let's just call them the Antsy Pack.

Then after a few listens, Franz start to break from the fold. Outlines form. Yes, they've got the spastic Ritalin-ready beat down, but from the initial melancholy a capella passage of the opening track, "Jacqueline," to the sad high notes closing "Come on Home" – entreating the listener to "Come on home / But don't forget to eat" – the group end up putting an enticingly personal spin on the already cliché-bound rock of their time. For every compulsory, derivative yet infectious "Take Me Out" and "Tell Her Tonight" on their self-titled debut (polished by Saint Etienne producer Tore Johansson), there are also less-expected grace notes: the boy-to-boy dance orgy "Michael," the shivery keyboard runs of "Auf Asche," and the driving, poppy outright Fall tributes "Cheating on You" and "Darts of Pleasure." Once those darts, or hooks, sink in, Franz start to look, and sound, better than some of those other rock Romeos in town. Franz Ferdinand play March 20, Slim's, S.F. (415) 522-0333. (Chun)

Mary Lou Lord
Baby Blue (Rubric)

Since she began busking in the streets of Boston in the early '90s, the biggest criticism of Mary Lou Lord has been that she relies on other musicians' songs. And though countless singers from Loretta Lynn to Kelly Hogan have made reputable careers largely by reinterpreting the works of others, it's an understandable complaint given the considerable strength of Lord's self-penned output. For every gem like "Some Jingle Jangle Morning" and "His Indie World," still the sliest satire of rock-boy culture on record, she offers a handful of folk-pop de-/reconstructions that, while often great, rarely compare to her own material.

Lord's latest album isn't likely to quash the cover-girl criticism, either. Her first studio work since 1998's surprisingly lackluster Got No Shadow, Baby Blue includes only three tracks co-penned by Lord. They're among the disc's finest too: "Turn Me Around" and the harmonica-driven "Long Way from Tupelo" are introspective, neofolk reflections on life's crossroads and cross fires, while the hushed "43" finds her compassionately assuming the role of a woman staring down a midlife crisis. Recalling those of both Amy Rigby and her late pal Elliott Smith, Lord's songs make it hard to settle for another collection of mostly hummed 'n' strummed remakes.

Which isn't to say she doesn't do justice to whoever's songs she sings here. Lord ably breathes new life into Badfinger's title track and "Fearless," by Pink Floyd, though the bulk of the album's songwriting is credited solely to her longtime collaborator and producer, Nick Saloman of the psych-centric Bevis Frond. And the two have clearly settled comfortably into their ongoing partnership, as Baby Blue is as off-the-cuff and confident as Lord has ever sounded in the studio. The result, despite its dearth of original material, is the career-defining album she's been threatening to make for years now. Mary Lou Lord performs Fri/12, 12 Galaxies, S.F. (415) 970-9777. (Jimmy Draper)

Cornelius
Point 5.1 DVD (Matador)

When Harry Nilsson made Point in 1971, he was sound-tracking a made-for-TV cartoon. Cornelius's 2002 nod to Nilsson – also titled Point – has inspired a video version. But because Cornelius's Point isn't as narrative as Nilsson's (or as Cornelius's previous adventure in stereo, Fantasma), the videos on Point 5.1 are elliptical. Point 5.1 does feature a little boy, though instead of a well-rounded dramatic character – like Nilsson's protagonist Oblio – he's sort of a Cornelius Mini-Me. The boy brushes his teeth and washes his face in the two strongest videos, "Drop" and "Drop – Do it Again," both directed by Koichi Tsujikawa. "Drop" 's swelling, ascending harmonies demand to be played again and again – that's what I did when I had only the album version, so I'm happy Point 5.1 repeats the song, matching it with two clips that explore water's visual qualities as playfully as the song explores water's sonic qualities. Hygiene becomes hallucinatory, thanks to Tsujikawa, who can make a stream of tap water look like a necklace of priceless jewels.

The collection's other live-action pieces are derivative, for better or for worse. "Fly" owes a debt to Yoko Ono, and though its fly's-eyes view of a restaurant is amusing, it doesn't have the intense, experience-magnifying quality of her or Cornelius's best work. "Point of View Point" offers the millionth rip-off of Koyaanisqatsi, though its neon-at-night freeway shots boast luscious colors and are edited with greater flair than a similar video Jonas Âkerlund made for Madonna's "Ray of Light." In the spirit of Nilsson, Point 5.1 does have a few animated elements. Whether they're minimalist ("Bird Watching at Inner Forest" 's Harold and the Purple Crayon-like line-drawing scenario, in which a running man takes flight) or op art ("Smoke" 's onslaught of dots and line patterns, in which a simple shift from shades of black to blue becomes dramatic), they're faithful to Cornelius's conceptual yet pop compositions. Here, as on the album, the point is that the point is always changing. (Huston)

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Dirty Old Town – Live at Coney Island DVD (Plexifilm)

Ted Leo is something of a legend on the Eastern seaboard, unless you've never heard of him – but that's what being a legend has become in the days of niche marketing. Leo cut his teeth in New York City's hardcore scene during the late '80s and went on to front a band called Chisel from 1990 to '97, where he honed a style that borrows energy from punk, melody from arena rock, and message from Jersey populists (I'm not sure a school of populism indigenous to the Garden State actually exists, but in California all we've got to go on comes from the Boss, Little Steven, and Tony Soprano, so forgive the confusion). Or maybe Billy Bragg is a better reference – in any case, although Leo has released four critically acclaimed albums with his band the Pharmacists, live performance is the backbone of his career.

Dirty Old Town – Live at Coney Island, directed by Justin Mitchell, weaves an interview with Leo through concert footage shot at a July 19, 2003, Siren Fest performance sponsored by the Village Voice. The interview, though it shows Leo to be intelligent, professional, and progressive, doesn't offer much in the way of penetrating material – we find out when he writes songs (not while he's touring, because there's too much work and he's always tired), what it's like touring (he gets in a groove), what he watches out for (overworking his voice, but he has to play his songs "full-on"), and why he performs so much and what it means to him (writing, recording, and performing his songs makes him feel complete).

This is a beautiful film – the camera brings you so close to the band while they're performing that you feel like you could touch them. And Coney Island – despite Leo's claim of loving urban beaches and the mix and collision between cultures – is a timeless, tattered blue-collar playground. We don't get much in the way of that collision he mentions, save occasional shots of Asian faces or black people sitting on benches. In fact, Leo says during an interview that he likes the "bygone era that it conjures up" – and that is what the filmmakers seemed to have gone after; perhaps that precludes much of the here and now.