CocoRosie

Like one of those lollipops with the dead insect inside, CocoRosie is sweet and lip-smackingly delicious, but there’s clearly something macabre and kinda disturbing beneath the surface. On The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, their third and most cohesive album yet, sisters Sierra and Bianca Casady patch together a slightly creepy yet joyful quilt of tracks that are reminiscent of a Joanna Newsom/Björk duet set to a background of tink-ling vagabond circus music and whirring children’s toys. CocoRosie never hesitates to mix conflicting genres into a unique breed of dark, dreamy electronic hip-hop opera punctuated by beats, music boxes, piano and harp. The first two tracks, the brilliant “Rainbowarriors and “Promise,” are punctuated by fun beats and odd samples. And the bouncy pop of “Japan” shifts to banshee opera over clanking sounds before returning to the infectious beats and whimsical lyrics that define the album: “Life is like a rollercoaster / It does flips and throws you over / Board your ship that’s going nowhere / If you stop, you’ll end up somewhere.”