With little notoriety to live up to and no multiplatinum sales to justify, Lloyd Banks has it much easier right now than his man 50 Cent. He's also blessed that The Hunger for More gets to be the first G-Unit solo album before that becomes a genre unto itself, and for now he should be riding high on the satisfaction that comes from an expertly managed debut.

If not quite addictive, The Hunger for More is totally listenable – a near masterpiece, even, in the still vibrant tradition of last year's Get Rich or Die Tryin', although if you don't love 50, you might find it hard to appreciate Banks, because, of all the G-Unit soldiers, his flow comes closest to 50's throaty, conversational delivery. His hooks are chanted in a threatening, playground singsong that would be even more like 50's if the menace could be increased by his smoothness. As it is, though, that smoothness tends to cut the menace all around, and despite the tattooed hands, gangsta rapper Banks appears a little miscast. His scowl seems always in danger of breaking into a gentle, heavy-lidded grin, and "Karma," the album's slow jam, finds him sounding more like Fabolous than like a thug getting his "21 Questions" on.

But The Hunger for More has a lot more of interest than the Banks persona. Producers, for one thing – 13 with 14 tracks between them, each offering a different take on Dre's orchestral bounce as filtered through Eminem (whose finger cymbal-heavy "Warrior Part 2" would have worked better as a beat for Beyoncé). On the album's opener, Mobb Deep's Havoc surprises with a midtempo strut that gets the Dre sound down to the chimes, and with "I'm So Fly," Timbaland gives Banks a wistful tango to taunt his enemies to. Vocal assists by 50 and Snoop are oddly unmemorable, but fellow G-Unit member Young Buck shines on "Work Magic," boding well for his Straight outta Cashville, the next G-Unit solo project slated for release. (David Larsen)

Bumblebeez 81
The Printz (Modular/Geffen)

Now that he's indulging his inner Scientologist and making albums full of dull introspection like Sea Change, who's going to replace the old Beck we know and love? Enter Bumblebeez 81, an unlikely Australian trio that recently struck gold – Mellow Gold, that is – with the hit "Pony Ride," a rollicking hybrid of rock and hip-hop harking back to the two-turntables-and-a-microphone frenzy that made Beck a party-starting smartass in the '90s. Heavy on submerged vocals, hand claps, and a murky din of distortion, the song has earned the group MTV rotation, stints opening for N.E.R.D. and Radiohead, and the rep as one of today's more adventurous new acts.

Fortunately, "Pony Ride" 's chugging momentum is the rule, not the exception, on The Printz. The stateside debut, which culls highlights from two previous import EPs, finds the 'Beez – siblings Chris Colonna and Queen Vila, plus their pal Surya – creating a lo-fi pomo pastiche of farm animal samples, Beasties beats, and fuzzed-out freakouts befitting early-era Beck. But if Colonna's impressive cut 'n' paste production has already earned him work with acts as disparate as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Sugababes, his MC skills – largely sloppy, indecipherable shout-outs – are often the album's sole sore spot.

When his kid sis steps to the mic, however, The Printz takes on a newfound sense of urgency. "I wanna be a rapper, not a ho backstage," Vila spouts on "Rappa," and if her delivery is still a little rough around the edges, well, it seems appropriate for her raw rhymes about putting placentas in blenders. Elsewhere she turns "Pink Fairy Floss" into a feisty boastfest (that's marred by a random reference to getting "chinky"), while "Vila Attack" is the gnarliest aggro disco Peaches never recorded. Whether or not any of these songs ultimately repeat the success of the more accessible "Pony Ride," The Printz is, at least this summer, where it's at. (Jimmy Draper)

Rachel Goswell
Waves Are Universal (4AD/Beggars Group)

Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter
Oh, My Girl (Barsuk)

Nora O'Connor
Til the Dawn (Bloodshot)

As every popette from Christina to Jessica to Madonna knows, nothing beats a heartfelt power ballad when it comes to breaking down the last remaining vestiges of resistance to dirty-girl antics. But what of our sad-eyed ladies of the powerlessness ballad? Sad sacks with uncombed hair, hunched shoulders, and too-big acoustic guitars – Cat Power, Shannon Wright, and the rest of the indie crew are too inhibited, or too cool, to belt out a say-it-loud-say-it-proud anthem like "Redneck Women" or "Beautiful." Too dour for commercial radio, too hidebound for college airwaves, somewhere between pretty and pretty depressing, our girls flirt with dissonance, wallow in the pleasant nod, and bathe in a certain darkness. You feel like urging them to take it easy and lie down, though you fear they might never get up. Why bother to string us along, toying with our emotions and stoking our need for strong statements, when you could be vaporizing into a fine mist, dissolving into tears, or sucking up the ether?

Former Slowdive vocalist Rachel Goswell is one of the worst – or best, depending on how you feel about the wilted women of folk – offenders. Her first solo album, Waves Are Universal, shows the Mojave 3 veteran putting both a triangle – hold that cowbell, along with the testosterone – and her limpid, Renaissance Faire-fine vocals to goode use. Waves catches the shoegaze pinup recording in a cave at one moment and utilizes field recordings gathered on holiday in Thailand at another, but throughout Goswell shoots for gentle, feather-light ease; she puts such little apparent effort into her folk-pop phrasing that you worry for her when an electric guitar busts in on "Save Yourself." Run, hide, gentle creature.

Jesse Sykes is another case all together, if only by virtue of her more effortful rasp. Sounding like a countrified Cat Power, Hope Sandoval, or at times Nico, Sykes taps a slivery, slippery brand of androgyny, and a tough thread of strength courses through the songs on Oh, My Girl. Perhaps the Sweet Hereafter bring it out in her – they make their presence known from the start on the opening title track, with its gracefully interlaced honky-tonk piano, guitar, and strings. Mood, of the dusky, drifting sort, is the M.O. for Sykes, as it is for Goswell.

When the impressive amounts of 'tude coming off Sykes and Goswell get wearing, there's the simple singing and general high spirits of Nora O'Connor, former member of Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire. O'Connor's humble, honky-tonkin' originals are few and far between on the cover-laden Til the Dawn, which includes a rewrite of Kitty Lester's "Loveletters." But when you hear the adept yet unassuming way O'Connor has with a song like Fleetwood Mac's "That's Alright," you'll wonder where the Chicago singer has been all this time (playing with Bowl of Fire, the Blacks, the New Pornographers, Archer Prewitt, Jeff Tweedy, and the like), when she so easily could be lining up behind Neko Case to make the vault from indie-girl warbler to full-fledged torch singer. Nora O'Connor's Til the Dawn is scheduled for August release. Rachel Goswell performs July 17, Cafe du Nord, S.F. (415) 861-5016. (Kimberly Chun)