YOU MAKE ME WANT TO JUMP AND SHOUT, BABY

I may be a gay man (and becoming more unapologetically so every day), but sorry, guys, I'm all about the girls. Compared to my favorite actresses (Juliette Binoche, Julie Christie, Cate Blanchett, Glenn Close), actors are merely incidental. And ladies like Shania, Dusty and Kylie outnumber the boys at least 2 to 1 on my iPod. The one area where male singers have always outdone the girls is rock & roll. But every few years, Yeah Yeah Yeahs release a new CD and make me rethink that stance. The female-led band's latest, It's Blitz (another brilliantly arch title, on par with Fever To Tell and Show Your Bones), is more of the same, only more.

Karen O's sexy intonations still bring to mind (at least my mind) Siouxsie Sioux, PJ Harvey and Patti Smith (three of my all-time favorite girl rockers), and listening to her makes me want to put on some eyeliner and glitter and get my ass to an East Village dancefloor pronto! Yes, her voice is one of the few things (close friends excluded) that makes me miss New York City. In a just, perfect world, platinum sales would be a foregone conclusion, and "Heads Will Roll" would be No. 1-bound on Billboard's Hot 100. It's not an impossible dream. In 2008, the US downloading public finally got it right and sent such worthy singles as Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" and MIA's "Paper Planes" into the Top 5. Will lightning strike again in 2009? Probably not. While we're waiting for a miracle, we can enjoy Yeah Yeah Yeah's new single, "Zero," below.