POSITIVE ATTITUDE.(Yeah Yeah Yeahs)

In July of 2004, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a rock trio from New York City, opened for Devo, the new-wave group, in a show at the band shell in Central Park. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 2003 debut album, "Fever to Tell," had gone gold, a considerable achievement for a noisy and idiosyncratic band that lacks a bass player and has a sound that is sometimes thin and spiky. The group had sold half a million records, in part because the video for "Maps," a stirring love song that is as close as the band gets to a ballad, had become a staple on MTV2.

The Central Park gig was the trio's most high-profile to date in its home town. It had been raining, and clear plastic ponchos had been distributed to the audience, about three thousand people, some of whom shouted "Devo!" during the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' set. The band members were fighting the crowd, the weather, even their clothes. Under a poncho, Karen O, the lead singer, who is twenty-seven years old and long-legged, was wearing a leotard that looked like a stained-glass window and appeared to be a couple of sizes too small. Eventually, Karen O (her last name is Orzolek) removed her poncho and tied it protectively around her waist while she romped around the stage, hollering and throwing her hands in the air. It was a typical performance for her: simultaneously aggressive and vulnerable. And, like everything the Yeah Yeah Yeahs do, the show was both off-kilter and mesmerizing.

"Show Your Bones," the group's second full-length album, which will be released in March, is a testament to its ingenuity. Karen O and her bandmates--Brian Chase, the drummer, and Nick Zinner, the guitarist--put primitivist graphics on their album covers and appear with bands, like the Liars and Black Dice, who think noise is its own reward. But beneath the art-rock trappings the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are pop musicians. Theirs is a slightly scruffy version of pop, made with cheap instruments and Karen O's surreal lyrics, but their songs--like their performances--have all the traits of Top Forty hits: economy, momentum, personality, and pleasure. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs value joy over indie credibility, and they want to be catchy. (The group's albums are each less than forty minutes long, and its other two releases are brief EPs.)

Chase, a compact, bespectacled young man, who attended Oberlin College with Karen O, is one of rock's most satisfying drummers; he is capable of complicated polyrhythms but rarely plays anything fussy. Zinner, who played in a duo with Karen O before they formed the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, is fine-featured and rail thin, with a nest of black hair and a talent for writing elegant, howling guitar motifs that often echo, but never overwhelm, her singing. Both men need to be this good to hold their own against Karen O, whose fearsome charisma would have made her a success had she appeared with nothing more than a microphone and a pair of maracas. She stalks the stage, plants her feet wide apart, pours beer on herself, and flings equipment around with no apparent regard for whom she might hit. (On the band's Web site, she is depicted breathing fire, with one foot resting on an enormous cartoon rabbit.) Her outfits, which are made by her friend the designer Christian Joy, are a jumble of kindergarten and runway: short, shiny skirts worn with Converse high-tops, ripped fish-net stockings, and, on at least one occasion, a Wonder Woman-style capelet. Karen O's voice lacks the power of Bjork's, but she is as versatile a performer. Sometimes she sounds like a barroom country singer; at others, like an Eastern European folksinger, or a ditzy pop star.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs played their first show in 2000, opening for the White Stripes at the Mercury Lounge. The following year, they recorded a five-song EP, which they released themselves. It quickly ...