You can thank Stacy's Mom for finally bringing Fountains of Wayne in touch with their target audience - the mass of young Americans who remember their hormonal teen years like they were just yesterday. FOW's fourth album (not counting the B-sides collection, Out-of-State Plates) features more tales of young lust and longing, set in such incongruous locations as the Department of Motor Vehicles (Yolanda Hayes), the airport baggage area (Michael and Heather at the Baggage Claim) and a TV newsroom (the title track). FOW have been vying with Weezer for the geek-pop crown, and this nicely observed collection of post-teen anthems should set the bar higher. The hooks and harmonies are spot-on, the observations pithy and humorously poignant, and there's even a country-flavoured curveball (Fire in the Canyon). www.fountainsofwayne.com   KEVIN COURTNEY

Download tracks: Someone to Love, Yolanda Hayes, Fire in the Canyon

The image of two boho Brooklynite sisters in Paris making mixed-up music with toy instruments, wearing Tupac T-shirts, sideways baseball caps and cannabis leaf medallions will always arouse a certain amount of suspicion. CocoRosie's previous attempts to create a seamless environment for hip-hop vernacular, opera singing, and baby-voiced freak-folk have been flawed and contrived yet also occasionally interesting. Their third album hosts some of their best songs to date. On the haunting Werewolf, Bianca rhymes a magical story that manages to sound like an epic fairytale and a poignant street thug drama all at the same time. However, Japan, a rollicking, celebratory pop sing-a-long, would be a whole lot more enjoyable if Bianca didn't persist with a cod-Jamaican accent. www.cocorosieland.com  LEAGUES O'TOOLE

Download tracks: Werewolf, Houses

Late December Cooking Vinyl

The toll taken by the years can affect artists differently, from blues-rooted sparks of genius to ornery world weariness. Maria McKee strikes a distinctly European pose on Late December, favouring subtle undertones over sharp primary colours, even on her most gung-ho declaration of faith in the world: Power On, Little Star. She mines a rich seam in the drums/ guitar-driven Too Many Heroes, wherein she betrays a previously invisible shared gene pool with that other goddess of small things, Aimee Mann. Trouble is, tales of the pedestrian don't always do justice to the music, and her reading of her own pristine pop anthem, A Good Heart, suffers from flabby production when a drum-tight treatment should have been mandatory. A mixed bag of life's ordinary disappointments. www.mariamckee.com    SIOBHÁN LONG

Download tracks: Power On, Little Star, Bannow

Formerly of New York band Luna - possibly the only pop/punk group in the world to successfully blend Velvet Underground, Abba, Scott Walker and Petula Clark - partners in music and love Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips come out of the Luna split with ideas intact, voices resonant and tunes to the fore on this excellent album. The pair take as the blueprint the 1960s work of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra; here are covers (Donovan's Teen Angel, The Troggs' Our Love Will Still Be There, Hazlewood's You Turned My Head Around) and originals that juxtapose mishaps and miseries with thrills and precious moments. There isn't a duff track, so the real highlight is the way in which the voices of Dean and Britta hit off and flirt with each other, the former sounding like Lambchop's Kurt Wagner, the latter like Memphis-era Dusty transported to Brooklyn. Cool? Very. www.deanandbritta.com    TONY CLAYTON-LEA

Download tracks: Singer Sing, Wait for Me

Flight Cases Martha Digs

Download tracks: Airborne, Mr Petit, A Singsong in the Sky