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Stereo Total's newest release, "Baby Ouh!," serves up the French-German electro-pop duo's biggest helping of kitsch and quirk to date. But band members Françoise Cactus and Brezel Göring might've gone overboard this time around. With a recurring carnival-like theme, album opener "Hello Ladies" features lyrics told through the perspective of a women's bathroom attendant, and the only sounds on "Tour de France" are the heavy breaking of a cyclist and a shrill whistling noise. But elsewhere, Stereo Total's oddities are more charming. The closer, "Violent Love," is an unusual sunny ode to a lover, where Cactus sings in a thick French accent, "I want to make violent love/To you, with the moon above." And against an electronic take on '60s girl-group sounds on the track "I Wanna Be a Mama," Göring sings about motherhood and corrupting his child ("I will call him Lucifer and teach him how to criticize/I will teach him how to live off prostitution"). --Lindsey Fortier
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