CD of The Week

It feels a touch odd treating Karen O's Crush Songs as something new. Many of these songs from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman date back to nearly a decade prior, and their hushed, lo-fi quality would appear to run almost abrasively counter to her ascension to mainstream consciousness: that Grammy-nominated soundtrack to Where the Wild Things Are; an Academy Award nod for a song contributed to last year's Her. Even the last few Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums paint the picture that she has outgrown dabbling in what many have dismissed as stopgap demos.

That's too easy a designation, however. As a whole, Crush Songs plays less like demo than diary. One thing that has been easy to overlook in Karen's career is her affinity and knack for not just intimacy but poignancy. Sure, she was on a date with the night with her flashy fashion and kickass stage prowess, but heart on sleeve staples like "Maps" and "Turn Into" reminded us that such dates were a rebound from something real, and real painful. Even at their most skeletal, these "new" songs tap into that same bittersweetness and render it cinematic. Whether she's paying tribute to Michael Jackson in "King," or lamenting how "love's a fucking bitch" in "Rapt," her emotions and talents couldn't be laid more bare or universal.

Forget next steps. Better to look as this collection as a healthy reminder that Karen always "had it," even if many of her fans only recently realized it. She's a crush we've never quite been able to shake, and hopefully never will.