Every generation gets the singers it needs – Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Minnie Riperton, Teena Marie, Mary J. Blige – the voices that coo, rage, comfort, and affirm. Ours has Jill Scott, a hip-hop feminist so wounded she needs someone to believe in, yet so fearless in her own skin that she seems to inhabit ours too. "I am not afraid to keep your pace," she sings. "I am not afraid to create my queendom."

Beautifully Human: Words and Sounds, Vol. 2, doesn't leap beyond Who Is Jill Scott: Words and Sounds, Vol. 1 (Hidden Beach, 2000). That's not her style. With the exception of "Talk to Me," in which neo-soul slips seamlessly into big-band jazz, each track is molasses slow, syrup covered in amber tones. Her musicians play the way she writes – unpacking the tiniest moments into four minutes of emotional complexity. Scott's aesthetic is acceptance, refinement, and slow progress, of living in the knowing that your people – family, friends, neighbors, lovers, the race – are who they are and can only get closer to you if you move toward them first. The tools she uses in that process – humor, empathy, humanity – are the same tools that inform her work.

In the hands of a lesser singer – say, Norah Jones or India.Arie – a song like "Family Reunion" would be kitsch. But Scott sings every line with wisdom and purpose, capturing each character in a concise couplet or two, revealing the breadth of emotions that always accompanies the spread of salad, pies, and blood history. It's no mistake that the ambient picnic noise recalls the opening of "What's Goin' On," for her most personal songs, like "My Petition," are the most political. "The Fact Is" completes the story of illusion and division begun on "Love Rain." "I could be a computer analyst, the queen with the nappy hair raising her fist," she sings, still stinging, "and even though I can do all these things, I need you." For Scott, the line is not a sign of weakness or postfeminist reversal; it's a declaration of truth and a plea for reconciliation in a lie-torn, strife-ridden world bereft of fulfillment. (Jeff Chang)

Interpol
Antics (Matador)

Faint
Wet from Birth (Saddle Creek)

Client
City (Toast Hawaii/Mute)

In the dim light, the morning after electroclash, let us remember its neglected sister electropop, and here comes electropop and its dark-eyed, minor-key, and keyed-up regulation-black darlings, ready to score with new soundtracks for our lingering postmillennial hangover and afterparty entanglements. Mostly they've got full-blown production and lush arrangements on their minds – perfect for all us lushes. The most imminently playable and popular, Interpol, ply us with subtle variations on their bleak theme with Antics, starting slow and subdued on "Next Exit" and quickly picking up steam on the clanging "Evil." At first listen, these guys sound deathly bored – and guess what, the mood is catching – but give Antics time and a set of headphones, and the morose, slightly damp high jinks may grow on you, though despite the careful sonic shifts and anthemic forays like "Length of Love," the album is still too texturally monotonous to qualify as a breakthrough. Much more noticeable are the changes on Wet from Birth (Saddle Creek), as the Faint similarly strive for an expansive sound, opening with the strident strings and brash orchestrations of "Desperate Guys." Though the mutation into a less recognizably gothified life-form seems to be taking hold, one questions whether they have the ideas to sustain an entire album.

So Client come as a chilly relief, channeling the feminine, flaunting – yipes – a sense of humor, and playing the sex card whenever they get the chance, whether it's salaciously mixed messages, needy hands-and-knees action, or outright prostitution. "I'm a girl on a mission / In any position . Just give me love / Just give me sex / Just give me money / What heart? / Why should I? / Uh. Uh-uh. Uh," Client A (Sarah Blackwood) and Client B (Kate Holmes) grunt like street-walking toughs on the high-camp "In It for the Money." Coyly semi-anonymous in working-girl shifts and pumps, these Mädchens in uniform are serviced by Depeche Mode's Martin Gore and the Libertines' Pete Doherty and Carl Barat, who contributed vocals to City. All the better to apply the dentist-drill trill and an inside-out Mary Jane Girls riff to "Overdrive," work that inexorable hook on "Come On," and grind out "Pornography," the most joyfully joyless cabaret ode to sex work since "Blue Money." Picture the Human League babes running off to join Fischerspooner's deca-disco – they're ready for their closeup and remix, coming soon to a lusty, crusty club night near you. Interpol signs CDs Sept. 29, 8 p.m., Virgin Megastore, S.F. (415) 397-4525. They perform Oct. 25, Warfield, S.F. (415) 775-7722. The Faint play Nov. 9, the Grand, S.F. (415) 548-3010, www.apeconcerts.com. (Kimberly Chun)

Scream Club
Don't Bite Your Sister (Tiny Sensational)

Several years after the last noteworthy new acts emerged from Olympia, Wash. – the Gossip and Tracy and the Plastics – the ladies of Scream Club have arrived to put their hometown back on the map.

On their badass debut, Don't Bite Your Sister, Sarah Adorable and Cindy Wonderful pay tribute to their riot grrrl predecessors by updating the brazenly feminist, pro-queer rhetoric that's become increasingly rare since the mid-'90s reign of Bikini Kill et al. Instead of going the girls-with-guitars route, however, Scream Club merge their old-schooled sloganeering ("We're gonna riot, not diet!") with the sort of electro-hip-pop hybrid that's very much de rigueur in these post-'clash days. Or, as they aptly describe themselves, "We sound like what would happen if Peaches and Mike D. had a love child."

Lest that image send you running in fear of another Avenue D wreaking havoc on club culture, rest assured that Adorable and Wonderful not only have sharp senses of humor but also impressive, irony-free flows that put 'em far ahead of their peers. In fact, Sister's politico-party jams are so unpretentiously well-intentioned that they're practically impossible to dislike: With such Northwest luminaries as Tobi Vail, Beth Ditto, and Mirah making cameos, songs like "Fight" and "What You Gonna Do?" make for fun, community-building boastfests, while Scream Club's positive, for-their-peeps credo is best captured on the insta-classic "Don't Fuck with My Babies": "We say babies, not just ladies, 'cause there's trannies and men / And if we are workin' together then we are gonna win." (Jimmy Draper)