SASAMI Blood on the Silver Screen (DOMINO) — Sasami was ready for a pure pop era. Following two full-length studio albums that joyfully roamed far and wide in their musical explorations, the New York performer devoted herself to studying how pop songs worked. She became a scholar of the Britneys and Gagas. Now that she’s graduated from the School of Hard Beats, Sasami is ready to spit some knowledge. Blood on the Silver Screen is a loose concept album with a lead character who traipses through well-known movie genres. Following along with the narrative isn’t necessary to appreciate the Sasami’s ingenuity. The story’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, and that might be enough. Sasami’s bright, brash vocals are held aloft on a benevolent swarm of electronic pop on “I’ll Be Gone,” and there’s a resemblance to other modern disco darlings such as MUNA on “For the Weekend.” Of course, Sasami’s kinship to chameleons means the album isn’t going to stay in one sonic mode. “Just Be Friends” has just enough of an Americana undercurrent to make it seem like she’s reaching out to Kacey Musgraves from the other side of the pop-country border, and “Nothing But a Sad Face On” suggests the plunky moodiness of Siouxsie and the Banshees. The totality of Sasami’s creativity sometimes eddies into a single tracks, as with “Love Makes You Do Crazy Things,” which adds chunky, Runaways-style guitars and clanking effects to an otherwise crisp pop atmosphere. Sasami presents her thesis on the album, and that thesis is sound. Come to this place for magic on the following cuts: “Slugger,” “Possessed,” “Honeycrash,” and “The Seed.”

BOB MOULD Here We Go Crazy (Granary Music/BMG Records) — From the first time that a studio recording of Hüsker Dü provided an intense stress-test of speakers from coast to coast, Bob Mould has been a prolific creator. Fans have rarely needed to wait more than a couple years for a new doses of his alternately blistering and perfectly polished rock music (with the odd digression into bloops and bleeps). So spare some sympathy for the Mould mavens who have crossed a half-decade desert since the release of the album Blue Hearts. At least they can take solace in the fact that the long-awaited follow up, Here We Go Crazy, finds the Sugar daddy in vintage form. Mould does what he knows best across the record. There’s the pummeling hard rock of “Neanderthal,” the patented relaxed intensity of the title cut, and the tightly-channeled Hüsker Dü energy of “Fur Mink Augurs.” And “Thread to Shine” is reminiscent of the moments on Mould’s sterling solo debut, Workbook, when Mould let the splendid specter of that former band of his creep in. “Lost or Stolen” is an exception to the the album’s general diesel-fueled energy, and that is awash in the cynicism and fury that’s been Mould’s bailiwick from the jump (“At the bottom of my dark black soul, there’s a reflection/ What I see is where I am right now, am I living on the edge of collapse”). It might have taken longer than before, but Mould rewarded the faithful. Restore your sanity with these tracks: “Breathing Room,” “When Your Heart Is Broken,” and “You Need to Shine,” and “Your Side.”