When your claim to pop immortality is co-writing "Dick In A Box," what do you do for a second act? For Asa Taccone, you turn a proven talent for smirking R&B into something deeper. The debut of his project with drummer Matthew Compton and inescapable producer/sessionman Danger Mouse is a Beck-ian journey into L.A. slacker soul, full of hooky neon jams that ponder fame's fraught highway and the emptiness of modern life. Often – as on "Waves," a dysfunctional love tune pitched with helium-sucking falsetto over a crack-pipe Motown groove – it’s unclear if the sentiments are intended as poignant or as punch lines. But on a set wired with this much sonic wit, the sincerity question may be moot.

Listen to Electric Guest's Mondo:

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• Photos: Random Notes

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."