Sweden continues its gradual infiltration of the U.S. market with Jens Lekman, a 23-year-old singer who writes music for sophisticated Stockholm couples who wear turtleneck sweaters, snug trousers, and fashionable haircuts like it was still the mid-'70s, to listen to while they eat vegetarian meals by candlelight and recline in front of a cracking fireplace in ultramodern beanbag chairs.

After three domestic EPs, one of which was awesome (Maple Leaves, which everyone should buy), Lekman has assembled a full-length CD for the United States, When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog. Sometimes it calls for finger snaps and sing-alongs, but mostly it's about love and heartbreak and stocking-footed gentleness.

Lekman's voice recalls a tender, young version of Morrissey's and Stephen Merritt's, with a permanent warble. He probably got an A in freshman poetry too. But lyrical weight isn't everything. And while Lekman's stories may lack the wit, venom, and sparkle of Merritt's and Morrissey's, he is singing in a foreign language, and he's got his clever moments: on "The Cold Swedish Winter" he observes that "When people think of Sweden I think they have the wrong idea, like Cliff Richards who thought it was just porn and gonorrhea." High five for rhyming gonorrhea with anything, Jens.

Musically it's as if the past 30 years didn't happen, and for 42 minutes you don't miss them. The phonograph crackle that starts off the symphonic build of "Tram #7" is sort of precious, but it fits the quivery strings and the coffee-can reverb of his gentle croon. The intimate, folksy love song "Julie" marks another high point, as does the energetic Belle-and-Sebastian-go-to-a-game-show theme of "You Are the Light," with its peppy horns and cooperative hand claps.

By the last track, the fire's died down, the dishes are done, and it's time to shed the turtlenecks and get your snuggle on. Lekman opts to tuck you into bed with one of his best, "A Higher Power," which starts with the Merritt-worthy line "She said let's put a plastic bag over our heads, and then kiss and stuff until we get dizzy and fall on the bed." Go Sweden! Go erotic asphyxiation! Go love! (Chris Slater)

Van Hunt
Van Hunt (Capitol)

When I try to think of anything I've listened to as often as Van Hunt's self-titled debut album (at least twice a day for almost a month now), which, by the way, is the best mainstream soul album to emerge in years, it turns out to be written by Van Hunt.

Example one: In 1999, Rahsaan Patterson's Love in Stereo (the last best soul album to emerge in years) remained in heavy rotation for almost three months in my car stereo, played with an almost identical, if not even more intense, frequency. Hunt wrote three of the best tracks off that album – "Friend of Mine," "Sure Boy," and "The Moment." Example two: In 1997, during a particularly dreamy bout of idealized early-twentysomething-ness, I replayed Dionne Farris's "Hopeless" an average of 30 times a day until the CD player broke. Hunt wrote that too. I'm currently investigating whether he also might have penned Diana Ross's "Upside Down," which sustained me from ages 6 to 8, though it's doubtful since Hunt is only 26 years old, which would have made him 2 at the time of the song's 1980 release.

Regardless, this Dayton, Ohio-born, Atlanta-based singer-songwriter has crafted an intensely rich, infinitely listenable album. More than anything else, Hunt's debut is an amazingly complete record, due to the fact that he's the only soul artist out there who understands the importance of two elements the genre's been sorely lacking for years: the craft of songwriting-as-storytelling and the importance of infusing the music with disparate influences culled from beyond its borders. A preternaturally perceptive lyricist whose compositions reveal sediments of everyone from Donny Hathaway to Muddy Waters to Prince to John Lennon to Sly and the Family Stone to the Cure, Hunt weaves piercingly perverse tales of modern-day romance on cuts like "Highlights" and "Down Here in Hell (With You)," weakens your knees with moony love songs like "What Can I Say? (For Millicent)" and "Precious," and unleashes gorgeous swathes of '80s electro-synth on "Out of the Sky" and "Hold My Hand," the latter of which is currently my favorite song. Which reminds me: I should probably thank Van Hunt in advance for my next favorite song right now. Van Hunt plays Thurs/9, Cafe du Nord, S.F. (415) 861-5016. (Sylvia W. Chan)

Dizzee Rascal
Showtime (XL/Matador)

It is indeed show time for 19-year-old London-bred MC Dizzee Rascal, known to his mum as Dylan Mills. After Dizzee picked up the accolades for last year's debut, Boy in da Corner, and put London's grime scene – a style typified by blasts of drum 'n' bass and two-step beats, flecks of Jamaican dancehall, and spare touches of traditional hip-hop, all shined up with a rather icy digital lacquer – on the musical map, his fans, with good reason, have some pretty high expectations.

In this case, Dizzee's got more to worry about than most MCs. Aside from the threat of an unlucky sophomore slump, his music is a rarefied kind, one that made the unlikely crossover to a U.S. audience despite his thick Kingston-by-way-of-Hackney patois. On top of that, the blight-stricken fodder for his fantastic tales of teenage mischief has eluded him with his newfound success – it's an archetypal hip-hop triumph in which the young rapper deftly captures on acetate the nuances of his hardened street life, hits pay dirt, and suddenly has to come at his music from an entirely different angle.

Considering all of those factors, Dizzee has made out quite nicely. On Showtime he's got the new angle covered with tracks like "Hype Talk," reminding us that despite his mounting exposure, maybe life in Dizzee's Adidas isn't as rosy as we think. His rapid-fire, tack-sharp delivery still gathers no moss, and his skittery, ring tone-styled beats certainly don't intend to hang around for any stragglers. Save for the odd Dizzee refresher course ("Everywhere" seems imitative of Boy's "Sittin' Here"), it's obvious he's hit a creative stride. "Dream" – a softened, "Hard Knock Life"-type ditty in which he gets deeply personal and samples Captain Sensible's "Happy Talk" to hilarious effect while goofily crooning, "How yooo gwan'a have a jreeem come chrooo" – is uncharacteristically lighthearted. On the other hand, "Girls," a tribal, near-ghetto-tech banger featuring his onstage sidekick Marga Man, sees Dizzee bouncing off the walls with disorienting arrangements and lyrical twists aplenty that mix glossolalia and Bow pub slang with regional euphemisms for the p word thrown in for good hip-hop measure. So we might look at Showtime as more a grand statement of intent than as a rhetorical challenge issued by the artist to himself. In either event, he's more than ready to amaze us when the curtain opens. (Ken Taylor)

Various artists
Future Soundtrack for America (Barsuk)

As Bruce Springsteen and the Dixie Chicks et al. stage a series of pro-Kerry concerts this fall, others are joining forces on record to help ensure Dubya gets his walking papers in November. Conceived by They Might Be Giants' John Flansburgh in conjunction with MoveOn.org and Music for America, Future Soundtrack for America finds nearly two dozen acts – including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Death Cab for Cutie, and the Flaming Lips – contributing exclusive songs, remixes, live tracks, and other rarities to raise funds for progressive groups and raise awareness about the evils of the Bush administration. The result, a musical companion to the book Future Dictionary for America (McSweeney's Publishing), is one of this election year's more enjoyable political protests.

The main criticism of these sorts of albums, of course, is that they preach to the converted. But even if that superficial critique were true, liberals still deserve music that echoes their frustration with this country's political climate. Which is exactly what Soundtrack offers with REM's "Final Straw (MoveOn Mix)" and They Might Be Giants' recording of the 1840 campaign song "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." Elsewhere, more personal songs like Sleater-Kinney's "Off with Your Head" and Elliott Smith's "A Distorted Reality Is Now a Necessity to Be Free" take on new, politicized meanings. The message wouldn't matter if the music weren't consistently exemplary, however, which is why the stellar Soundtrack is such an important piece of resistance in these months before the United States heads to the voting booth. (Jimmy Draper)

Ulrich Schnauss
A Strangely Isolated Place (Domino)

I find a lot of records lovely, but very few of them are also pretty. Ulrich Schnauss's second album is full of lush arrangements, sparkling details, and splendid production that make me smile, but what keeps me clinging to A Strangely Isolated Place like a teenager to his newfound "soulmate" is Schnauss's unashamed embrace of beauty.

It's clear Schnauss has listened to his share of Slowdive and Chapterhouse, and his debt to guitar-driven shoegaze bands is particularly obvious on numbers like "On My Own" and "Clear Day," which elevate drifting texture with bursts of harmony. But despite the feel, there's not a single guitar to be found in Schnauss's studio, just a 27-year-old Berliner and his synths. While there's nothing particularly new about a solo producer laptopping his way to a wall of sound that rivals a six-piece band, Schnauss's ease with melody, his technique of turning a predictable chord change into something transcendent, and his ability to give me just what I hope to hear but make it sound unexpected, creates an album that's particularly extraordinary.

Among all the sweetness there are a few saccharine moments: the hackneyed opening of "Blumenthal" and the too-self-conscious grandeur of the title track, for example. But Schnauss overcomes those instances with a combination of the sublime and the spectacular. When I was 17, I knew in the back of my mind that my girlfriend might not have been the most remarkable creature ever to walk the planet – even if she did have the right heels and read Sartre. But, like A Strangely Isolated Place, at the time she was blindingly perfect. Ulrich Schnauss plays with M83 Sept. 17, Mezzanine, S.F. (415) 625-8880. (Peter Nicholson)