Out this week is the fantastic, self-titled fourth album by Robyn, a Swedish singer who Wired recently dubbed the “anti-Britney” — insofar as they’re both blonde singers, but Robyn has made polar opposite career choices. What it all adds up to is that she hasn’t yet “sold out” or “gone fucking nuts,” and is therefore well suited to fill the void in our lives of sexy blondes making pop music (sorry, Madonna, I didn’t say “women who alternate between impressing and disgusting us”).

I heard most of the tracks on this album a few years ago (although it is just now being released in America, most of the material was released in Sweden in 2005) totally by accident. I was searching for songs with “robot” in the title, and ended up with the wonderfully bare future-ballad “Robotboy” (another very fantastic robot-titled song is Guided By Voices’ “Gold Star for Robot Boy,” but I digress). And while “Robotboy” was derided by critics at the time, it’s an apt representative of the rest of Robyn’s work. She is just as capable a singer as Britney or any other pop princess, the catchiness of her hooks and melodies is comparable to the best we’ve seen in the recent past. Where she diverges from the rest of the pack, besides the fact that she is still a) not a mom, and b) not insane, is in her actual, demonstrated penchant to do new things in pop music. “Doing something new” for young female pop singers has traditionally meant wearing less clothing, and while I don’t have a principled objection to that, it does seem to distract them from actually doing new things musically.

The second song that drew me in to Robyn, and one that most people actually like (I still stand by “Robotboy”), is “Be Mine.” A ballad with a driving beat and infectious string accompaniment, “Be Mine” has that delicious quality of making you dance when you really just want to sob — the chorus is “No you never were / and you never will be mine,” for chrissakes! In the bridge we hear a spoken word interlude in which Robyn sees the object of her affection with his new girlfriend, who is wearing the scarf Robyn bought for him… a more pathetic realization of unrequited love I have never heard in pop music.

The album may have fallen flat on its face if every song were as emotionally crushing as “Be Mine,” but most of the rest are pure ego pieces, full of the kind of swagger that is almost never seen among girl singers. “Konichiwa Bitches” contains some of the most wonderfully dirty lyrics you will hear today (”this week” would be pushing it, just in case you also listen to “Soulja Boy,” which you should) laid down over a beat that somehow still sounds very fresh, despite being 3+ years old by now. As an added bonus, this American release contains a few extra tracks, notably a cover of the Prince song “Jack U Off,” in which the singer offers a varieties of situations in which she will jack you off, while someone bangs out chords on a piano that is just a little out of tune. “If you really wanna be a star / we gotta do it in your mama’s car / naked in the Cadillac / I’ll jack you off.” This is seriously pure gold.

I could go on and on about Robyn, and if you know me “IRL,” I probably already have, so I will cut this short around now-ish. Robyn by Robyn is in stores now, and if you enjoy pop, indie, or any combination of the two (what exactly isn’t in the union of those sets? Broadway musicals?), you should check it out.