In a move pop-tease Mariah Carey should have the guts and honesty to match (I mean, who's she trying to kid?), Christina Martinez posed nude on the cover of the first two Boss Hog records. The cover of their third album (and major-label debut), "Boss Hog," featured a spooky, Edward Gorey-style drawing of her wielding a parasol in a long black dress, which didn't exactly prepare you to be dragged up five miles of gravel road by the opening track.

On Whiteout, she's nude again--but with her fixed stare and outstretched, oddly vestigial hand, she looks more like a fembot than a sexpot, and the white-sheeted band members on the back look like a morgue shot. This sets up perfectly the album's strangely synthetic feel. Like it says in the notes, this one was made "in the lab," not in the shed. More crafted, less captured. The album has all the cheesy funk and juicy organ of a Sixties-Pop record, but the sound has a sterility that seems to satirize the very idea of pop--while at the same time proving that Boss Hog can out-do anyone at it. The same minimalist riffs that fueled their formerly fierce garage rock are well suited to their new-found precision. At times Martinez's voice has never sounded better, like the Church of Stax chorus in the title track. "Nursery Rhyme" starts with a slow, fat rhythm then becomes a Wall-of-Sound psychedelic-punk nugget (although it could really lift off with better drumming). "Trouble" has a bratty chorus that's equally perfect. "Get It While You Wait" pulses like a dance floor with beats by drummer Hollis Queens that are more like dry hip-hop than sweaty funk; if it had the sexy Christina in a trippy space-alien video of the sort done by your current R&B stars, it could win votes on MTV's "Total Request Live." (I mean that as a compliment.)

You can't talk about Boss Hog without referencing the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion--Jon is in both bands, is married to Christina, and may be the hardest working man in show business--but Boss Hog is not Jon Spencer's band, and this album is even more Christina's. (Although you have to wonder how long Spencer can keep up the double-duty, if both bands get bigger.) Maybe it's her relationship with Jon, or maybe it's just me, but she still has the punk-moll authority of Courtney Love, although now she's less the harsh gothic queen and more the chilly, slyly menacing chanteuse. In "Stereolight," which opens with a tight, funky beat that's suddenly afloat in vocals and keyboards, she adopts the detached world-weary sexuality of, say, Madonna, and throws in retro-future references to space and stratosphere just like Mme. Material did in last year's persona.

The more careful approach does underscore some weaknesses (occasionally flat vocals, silly lyrics, stiff drumming) that were lost in the thrust and chaos of "Boss Hog." The stop-start rhythms never quite give way to straight-ahead velocity, resulting in an album that's more threat than attack. Jon Spencer's exhortations can seem staged: This being a studio construct, there's no feeling that the band are all right there, waiting to crash down with the next crack of his fist. "Whiteout" is more cool and aloof; nothing matches the death-waltz drama of "Texas" or the swamp funk of "Green Shirt" from "Boss Hog." "Monkey" is driving and pissed-off, with some pleasing Sonic Youth dissonance, but it's the last song, the end-of-album rave-up, not a promise of more to come. (And 10 songs in 32 minutes don't a full album make.)

But their obvious intention here makes those criticisms moot. "Whiteout" has a subtle but undeniable power, and several songs are catchy enough to invade your brain whether you like it or not. If justice ruled the airwaves, it would take over the streets and swimming pools this summer. Boss Hog are still angry, still funny, and the creepy sci-fi vibe carries the same dark undercurrent they once expressed with a full-on assault. Boss Hog are always more about ironic style than substance, whether they're monstrous noise rockers or a faux-slick dance band. This sounds like their subversive bid for the velvet throne of stardom.