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:

Related
• Photos: Random Notes

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"