and more specifically, ones that look like they were done with wood cut prints or cut paper.

cool, i've been talking about taking a wood cut class but haven't pulled the trigger. Remember everything prints backwards!

With Menomena, you always get a total package. Their first album, 2003's I Am the Fun Blame Monster, came with a hand-assembled flip book, complete with moving anagrams. The vinyl edition took the packaging a step further: It folded up into an origami monster with a moving mouth. Their second outing, a minimalist ballet score cutely titled Under an Hour, came in a stark, mostly white container that looked a lot like the music it contained. And Friend and Foe, their third, has possibly the most brilliantly executed cover art of the decade.

Illustrated by Craig Thompson of "Blankets" fame, the front cover has eight possible permutations, four when the CD is in the case, and four when it's in the player (it'll be there a lot)-- and that's not counting all of the slight variations you can get by rotating the disc when it's in the tray. The drawings-- a hellish, humorous freak universe on their own-- are punched with holes to reveal other worlds behind them, full of characters, snippets of lyrics, and the record-fetching dog from the Barsuk logo.

Most cover art frankly isn't even worth talking about in the CD age, but this is so unique that it warrants deeper discussion than I can give it here. And speaking of the total package, Menomena deliver just as spectacularly on record. While Under an Hour could rightly have been seen as a detour or stopgap after Blame Monster, Friend and Foe follows through on the potential of their unique sound, proving their wildly great debut was no fluke.