Yeah Yeah Yeahs: hoping you feel cooler than you might actually be

Bites from Sasha Frere-Jones' New Yorker review of the forthcoming Yeah Yeah Yeah's CD, Show Your Bones:

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs value joy over indie credibility, and they want to be catchy. [Thank God.]

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Is she talking to her lover? Or to her bandmates, imagining that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are on the verge of becoming big enough to be resented? Karen O understands that rock lyrics aren’t necessarily better when they’re clearer.

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The next song, the gentle and plangent “Way Out,” borrows liberally from R.E.M., Sonic Youth, and Nirvana, which is a sign of confidence; the Yeah Yeah Yeahs know that no one will mistake them for anyone else, however much they plunder the past.

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“It’s important for kids to feel bigger than they usually do,” Karen O told me. “We’re trying to make you feel a little bit cooler than you might actually be.”