In the video for “Do You Want To,” the first single from Franz Ferdinand’s entertaining new album, “You Could Have It So Much Better,” the four Scotsmen dress in matching satin jackets and striped shirts, like a switchblade wielding gang from the 1950s. So attired, they find themselves in the middle of a modern art gallery opening and proceed to wreak havoc on the chin scratching hobsnobbery. They splash drinks, swing from the installations, and piss in a Duchamp “Fountain.” “Here we are at the transmission party / I love your friends they’re all so arty,” Alex Kapranos sings sarcastically. The outcome, however, isn’t as confrontational as you might expect. By the end, they’ve got the pretentious crowd dancing along with them.

For this art school-trained quartet, it’s a clever tactic: The arty references satisfy the in-crowd, and mocking them satisfies everyone else. They’ve perfected the same strategy in their music. The heady mix of New Wave and jagged disco-punk references makes rock critics swoon, while their irrepressible poppiness and sexual swagger does the same for lay fans.

Like the Hives, Franz Ferdinand’s half-serious braggadocio is self-realizing. They come on so outrageously cocksure that everything and everyone just bends to their confidence. The band’s idea of romantic and musical courtship is pretty well encapsulated in lines from “Do You Want To”: “When I woke up tonight I said I / I’m gonnna make somebody love me / and now I know, now I know, now I know that it’s you / you’re lucky lucky, you’re so lucky.”

Their confidence isn’t entirely misplaced. The band has a genuine talent for pop hooks and unexpected tempo changes. They’re almost too good – the songs are so glutted with effortless pop elements that they can be taken for granted. What on other al bums would be obvious first singles here become mere filler because there’s just so damn much of it. But, properly paced, it could keep the album in rotation at more adventurous radio stations for the next 18 months.

“This Boy” zigs and zags with breakneck speed, never slowing down for the sharp corners until it arrives at the unlikely chorus “I want a car / I want a car, yeah.” “Evil and a Heathen” is a double-time foray into White Stripes territory, all kick drum and Southern gothic lyrics. And “The Fallen” alternates between sideways post-punk passages and unabashed “woo hoo hoo” choruses, threading them together with Kapranos’s sturdy vocal melodies.

Faced with so much up-tempo pop, it’s the slow stuff that sticks with you after a few listens. “Eleanor Put Your Boots On” is a lovely, Beatles-esque trans-Atlantic love letter to Kapranos’s girlfriend, Eleanor Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces. But “Walk Away” may be the most revealing song on the album. Full of noir surf guitar, it illuminates the mind of a man who has found strength in being a “leaver” and an “unbeliever.” “I swapped my innocence for pride / crushed the end within my stride,” Kapranos sings of his transformation. He tries to convince himself that he loves “the sound of you walking away.” By the end, however, the mask is cracked, giving us a glimpse of the person behind the swagger.

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Dangerdoom’s “The Mouse and the Mask” is the latest crossover between the music and cartoon worlds. This time, it’s a combination of under ground hip-hop and the Cartoon Network’s late-night “Adult Swim” programming, featuring characters from both: Brak, Talib Kweli, Master Shake, Meatwad and Carl from “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” Ghostface Killah, and Space Ghost.

If you have trouble telling which are rap names and which are animated ones, it isn’t entirely your fault. The leaders of this 2-D circus are Danger Mouse and MF Doom, a live-action DJ and MC who take their names, respectively, from a cartoon and a Marvel Comics super villain.

DJ Danger Mouse, ne Brian Burton, is best-known for the sensational Beatles-Jay Z mashup, “The Gray Album,” which was never officially released due to copyright infringement problems, but made its creator’s reputation nonetheless. He confirmed his standing with his work on the Gorillaz blockbuster “Demon Days.” MF Doom (Daniel Dumile) is likewise one of the most prolific talents of the hip-hop underground – and one of the most enduring, having started his career as Zev Love X of the early 1990s outfit KMD.

In fact, KMD’s 1991 breakthrough album “Mr. Hood” is a good point of reference for “The Mouse and the Mask.” “Mr. Hood” was constructed as a dialogue between Zev Love X and a faceless whitey named Mr. Hood; here we have much the same thing, only with Doom interacting with a cast of cartoon characters.

It makes for entertaining listening, particularly on “Space Hos,” which devolves into an argument between Doom and Space Ghost over who will host his late-night talk show. “How they go an’ give his own show to Tag Ghostal / any given sec, he may go mad postal / stay wavin’ that power band space cannon / and have the nerve to jump in the face a’ Race Bannon.” It’s clever, if you can unpack all the nerdy cartoon minutiae. More accessible are the charms of Danger Mouse’s beats, which combine Esquival-inspired vibraphone, synth, trombones, and Wurlitzer piano.

Recommended, but only for those with a pop-culture IQ of 180 or better.