The Cultured Girl

Old favorites: The Ronettes, Sleater-Kinney
Upgrade: The Pipettes, We Are the Pipettes

Just watching the Pipettes’s music video for “Pull Shapes”—without sound, no less—convinced my roommate to buy this album. I’m glad he did, because the quirky, carousing songs live up to the hilarious Russ Meyer visual collage. Like the music video, the summertime songs on We Are the Pipettes conjure up a hodgepodge of eras: Swingy strings call to mind teen dances fraught with flip-hairdos, while the edgy British-accented vocal harmonies lean more toward 1990s riot-grrl rock. This may not be an album you hand down as a family heirloom, but it will be the perfect thing to take you through the end of summer.