Justice, † (Cross)

There's a delicious moment of silence in nearly every Justice song. You know the one I'm talking about: those few milliseconds right before everything explodes in a mess of filtered funk. The precise moment when tension becomes release. But, like fellow French dance duo Daft Punk, the secret to Justice's success is that underneath all the obfuscation — the tension, the release, a warbling Uffie on "The Party" — are beautiful pop songs. Take a listen to the stuttering blast of hip-hop-infused musculature that undergirds "Newjack" and ignore the sound palette for a moment. It's actually not that hard to imagine Frank Sinatra crooning over the same melody. Sure, the grinding blast of "Stress" would've probably given Ol 'Blue Eyes fits, but there's no denying the power of kiddie sing-along "D.A.N.C.E." and the similar sounding, but nonetheless entrancing, "Dvno."

It helps that Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay are new at this musician thing. They started making tracks in 2003 after remixing Simian's "Never Be Alone" and famously causing Kanye West to melt down at the MTV Europe Music Awards when the song's video won over West's "Touch the Sky." Cross similarly sounds like two dudes finding melodies that sound pretty cool — and then playing them over and over again until you can't remember a time when you didn't know them by heart. The recipe may sound simple — overdriven bass, strident strings and an unrelenting kick drum feature on nearly everything great here — the results are anything but.