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When Ashlee Simpson began her rise to fame (and later infamy) in 2004, the last thing the world needed was another pop star in her sister's mold—which was lucky for Ashlee, who does not have Jessica's vocal range (nor, need it be said, her Barbie looks). Packaged and primed, Ashlee was groomed to be the anti-Jessica, the Pat Benatar to Jessica's Olivia Newton John. With dark brown hair and that nose, she even managed to look the part. She was always more spunk than anything else, which was made abundantly clear when she was caught lip-synching on Saturday Night Live. (The outcry always seemed like so much TMZ faux-naif positioning.) If for no other reason, Ashlee has always been an interesting character to follow because the machinations of her handlers have always been blithely transparent. (Nose job? Sure! You look great! Almost as good as your sister!) All of this makes it almost incidental that her music is by far the more listenable. Here's the first single, Outta My Head, off her newest album, Bittersweet World—Aw, ain't it, though?

Toronto's Tokyo Police Club has it all: youth, chops and buzz. All they need is an album. After teasing their fans for three years with just two E.P.'s, they finally have the goods, Elephant Shell, due out today. They're post-punk with a knack for turning riffs into earworms. Their lead singer, Dave Monks, sounds Canadian in the New Pornographers vein. And the video for the single Tessellate is endearing. How can you not love them?

It's always with a bit of trepidation that one writes about reformed bands like Blind Melon and Whitesnake. Can Blind Melon be Blind Melon without Shannon Hoon? (This is actually a question that several of us used to ask each other in bad-band-geek drag around the office.) Is Whitesnake simply David Coverdale and whoever he choses to play with regardless of whether they banged the drums on "This Is Love" or any other of the band's hits? Considering the turbulent history of Whitesnake, the answer to the latter questions is a clear yes, but the answer to the former is a bit more elusive. Is it an ontological question or one of semantics? Probably neither. Consider it cynically and it becomes plain: it's one of economics. When the music sounds like it does below, what other answer is there? Blind Melon's first studio album in over 10 years is For My Friends. Whitesnake celebrates its 30th birthday with Good to Be Bad.

HBO did Flight of the Conchords the favor of introducing them to an American audience, first with a comedy special, then later with the comedy series which ran last year. They were in no small part responsible for the band winning a Grammy, the first for a New Zealand act in 24 years. So it would be wrong to suggest HBO has been anything but a positive influence on the careers of Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie. That being said ... something is lost—call it spontaneity—when the cable channel does its elaborate productions of the duet's music for the series. It's just not as funny as it is when it's performed live. But maybe that would have been the case regardless of what type of production they did. The result of their labors can be heard for the first time on a self-titled CD to be released today. It's still good for plenty of chuckles.

Over the past two years, the parodists from New Zealand, Flight of the Conchords, have scored with a hit HBO show (in which they play a hapless struggling band whose mundane adventures are punctuated by song) and won a Grammy award with their debut U.S. E.P. (seriously, a Grammy, and seriously, for an E.P., which must have made all those losers who wrote full albums feel like suckers). One half of the group even had a moderately successful indie film, Eagle vs. Shark. While Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement may not be household names, they are getting there.

Another step in that direction is the release today of Flight of the Conchords’ self-titled full-length album. The group had self-released some recordings in New Zealand, recorded a BBC radio series, and even had that award-winning E.P. last year, but this is its first proper studio album and their first major U.S. release.

Of course, it's a soundtrack, a selection of songs performed on the band’s HBO series. And like most soundtracks it's by no means a comprehensive catalog of the show’s songs: at 15 tracks it would have been hard to include more. Yet it’s missing some of the band’s best tunes, like the flawlessly funny and well-written “Tape of Love.” The song exemplifies the central conundrum of the band. The mix of overwrought earnestness that begins the song is straight out of Mike + the Mechanics’ iconic “The Living Years,” pondering “Love is like a roll of tape/ It’s real good for making two things one/ But just like that roll of tape/ Love sometimes breaks off before you're done” before the triumphal, “Bittersweet Symphony”-like chorus kicks in with “Brown paper, white paper/Stick it together with the tape, the tape of love.”

The thing is that the song, in addition to being hilarious, is also nearly as catchy as those smash hit referents and that makes Flight of the Conchords stand out in the crowded genre of musical comedy: These dudes don’t just spoof songs, they can write songs. Somewhere between Weird Al’s groan-worthy punning and Randy Newman’s wry autership, these guys force the ultimate identity crisis: am I singing along to these songs and repeating the lyrics because they’re catchy, great tunes—because it’s music—or am I just another moron endlessly repeating lines from Chappelle’s Show?

It’s a thin line, to be sure.

Adding to this vague sense that Flight of the Conchords may actually be “good” is the company they keep on their label and a resurgence of audio-focused comedy. This isn’t some HBO afterthought of a soundtrack album, but a release in conjunction with Sub Pop records, onetime breakers of Nirvana and Mudhoney and latter-day fablers of indie reconstruction, thanks in part to, yes, comedy albums. Alongside recent label successes like the Shins and the Postal Service have been releases from David Cross, Patton Oswalt, and Eugene Mirman—and falling aesthetically somewhere in the middle of all that you get Flight of the Conchords.

Sub Pop’s Steve Manning said, “The comedy records were really inspirational to us here; they have sold quite well and helped redefine the label at a time when we were really struggling. David Cross came out near the Shins and Postal Service and really helped turn the label around.”

Other labels are following suit, like Matador with its upcoming release of Earles & Jensen’s “Just Farr a Laugh.” So given the push toward reviving the comedy album market (not a little influenced by Internet sensations like Tom Scharpling’s “The Best Show” on WFMU), it makes sense to capitalize on bands blending humor with an indie-rock sensibility and the musical ability to send up more genres than just indie rock. For other examples, look at the phenomenal success of SNL short “Lazy Sunday,” helped plenty by the song’s beat being pretty well done, or the music-comedy work of hipster comics Zach Galifialakis, Demetri Martin and others. Even Will Oldham and Cat Power have experimented with comedy (with varying degrees of success).

To sweeten the deal, these comedy releases are getting the star packaging treatment, from detailed booklets to, in the Conchords case, a poster-sized illustration of the band, and some frogs, and maybe a space shuttle. It’s a move to appeal to the age-old function of the comedy album: lifestyle accessory.

What distinguishes the band further from the history of cheesy spoof songs is its attention to genre. McKenzie and Clement are pop chameleons. They employ falsetto, they get dolled up in ridiculous accents (and acknowledge that their natural accents are pretty ridiculous too), and they even don robot voices on “Robots,” singing “The humans are dead/We used poisonous gasses/And we poisoned their asses.” They ape French lounge (“Foux du Fafa”), dancehall (“Boom”), hip-hop (“Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous”), and offer plenty of their seemingly signature blend of soft rock and smooth jams (“A Kiss is Not a Contract,” “Prince of Parties,” “The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room),” “Business Time”). There’s an homage to David Bowie, called “Bowie,” that traverses from Major Tom to Let’s Dance, with queries like “Hey Bowie, do you have one really funky sequined space suit? / Or do you have several ch-changes? / Do you smoke grass out in space, Bowie?/ Or do they smoke Astroturf?/ Ooh!” Then there’s also the amazing interpretation of the Pet Shop Boys—its utter nerdiness betraying a love of source material absent in, say, “Like a Surgeon”—using the gothic synthy dance-pop of “West End Girls” to inspire “Inner City Pressure,” “Neon signs, hidden messages/ Questions, answers, fetishes/ You know you're not in high finance/ Considering second hand underpants/ Check your mind, how'd it get so bad?/ What happened to those other underpants you had?"

And such adoration of the various incarnations and personalities of pop is what led inexorably to a proper studio album. One wonders if, having worked with a real producer, Mickey Petralia, (Beck, Ladytron) and packaged their music just like any other album, the boys will want to keep going back to the small screen.

HBO will be sticking with the Conchords’ program, now working on its second season. It’s interesting to note that HBO was also the channel of Tenacious D, a musical comedy duo featuring Jack Black that fared far worse. Yet Conchords probably have more in common with Ricky Gervais’ Extras (and not just for having songs in the show centered around David Bowie), which speaks to the intellectual depth of the humor and the project. “Maybe it’s okay to hum these tunes after all!”

On Saturday, June 2—the kind of hot and humid day that only inspires a dread of July and August—cast and crew members of HBO’s new show Flight of the Conchords crowded into a small soundstage at Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yards.

Inside, an elaborate set was made up to look like the prototypical I-hope-to-make-rent-next-month New York City apartment: two twin beds in a cramped bedroom, an overstuffed, dingy striped sofa, some ironic art on the walls, single dishes and glasses, etc. It was meant to depict the Lower Lower East Side/Chinatown–based home of “New Zealand’s 4th most popular folk parody duo” (as the many advertisements describe Flight of the Conchords), otherwise known as Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, two lovable Kiwis hoping to make their way in the big city. The show follows their travails as buds in a band, which usually involves unpredictably bursting into song, to questionable effect. (“You’re so beautiful / You could be a waitress / You’re so beautiful you could be an air hostess in the 60’s / You’re so beautiful / You could be a part … time … model,” they harmonize, deceptively sweet, to an attractive blonde at a party. While dressed in tinfoil as robots, ostensibly for a video shoot, they put on their best android voices to sing, “The humans are dead / We used poisonous gasses / And we poisoned their asses.”)

It was the last day of shooting for Conchords, which will air on June 17 (a.k.a. the HBO-designated sweet spot, Sunday night, which will feel gapingly empty after The Sopranos’ June 10 series finale). They were shooting part of what was being referred to as their “Bowie” episode. In it, Mr. McKenzie, 30—a lanky, doe-eyed man-child in a red-striped shirt—has been wrestling with body issues, namely that he appears too skinny. In a dream sequence, David Bowie (who looks a lot like Mr. McKenzie’s bandmate, roommate and best mate, Jemaine) appears in Bret’s dream to spout rock-god wisdom.

Mr. Clement, 33, wearing heavy white face makeup (he’s the 1972 incarnation of the glam-rock David Bowie) and blond streaks in his dark hair, stood off-camera reading lines for Mr. McKenzie to react to. Over the next four takes, the two played fast and loose with the scripted text, ad-libbing various bits into Bret’s past “funky dreams”—a guinea pig with his face on it, a dog with his face on it, a cat with his face, the time he was a chair and people kept sitting on him (“Were you feeling anxious?” Jemaine/Bowie asked), each time getting around to the main bit of advice, which was that perhaps Bret should try adding an eye patch to his look. A few crew members covered their mouths to stifle laughs during filming.

“The eye patch was probably the only thing that had to get in there,” Mr. McKenzie said later, over salmon and chick peas, during the production’s lunch break. “There’s a script we use as a structure …. ”

“ … that we never really learn,” Mr. Clement interjected. Next Page >