For any music fan whose default channel of choice is MTV2, Karen O has long been a household name. Leave it on for long enough and, sooner or later, up she pops again: the sequined leotard; the fringe that ends halfway down her nose, all the better to accentuate the yelling cherry lips between which she is occasionally wont to insert a microphone; the undeniable sense that if Iggy Pop and PJ Harvey had a baby, this would be the force unleashed. Interviews suggest that in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ infancy, the attention lavished upon their half- Polish, half-Korean frontwoman put a strain on their “democracy”.

Despite the drummer Brian Chase’s background in an experimental jazz side-project and Nick Zinner’s repertoire of barely distinguishable scowls, it seems that journalists had a lot more questions for the Yeah Yeah Yeah with the hot legs.

The problem when you’re a living piece of performance art, of course, is that it doesn’t always translate on to record. Recorded in just over a fortnight, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 2003 debut album Fever to Tell played as much to their strengths as it could — but for the best measure of its tidal punk squall you were better off with the DVD that followed a year later: Karen O lording it over a San Francisco audience, dressed in a gold body suit, while just behind her Chase pinned down a tumbling, tribal rhythm.

Three years on, the fundamentals are still in place. Mysteries is a bulge-eyed amphetamine pulse of a song, which doesn’t so much end as disintegrate in a symphony of emetic screams. Channelling Siouxsie & the Banshees via Seattle 1990, Fancy underscores Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ conviction that rock’n’roll is still at its most exciting when recorded at levels the equipment can barely cope with.

In other senses though, it’s a record seemingly sculpted by the weather of life: a high profile relationship between Karen O and the film director Spike Jonze has been and gone, as has the 18-month world tour that brought the band to the brink of expiry. And so, while on past form it might not be surprising to hear Karen O declare on Warrior “Men like me because I’m a warrior”, you’ll find yourself gulping at the fug of emotional exhaustion that envelopes her words.

On the similarly wounded Sweets, the idle thoughts of a lover spurned breeze into the foreground. “Who you falling for? Whose lies?” inquires the 27-year-old singer. Then, just as you imagine that this is what a woman scorned is left with once her fury has died, the song explodes like a lit powder keg: from rimshots and pretty country chords to the sort of porcelain-shattering tumult in which this band has always specialised.

Evidently they’ve learnt a little restraint, even if, as on the current single Gold Lion, it amounts to nothing more complex than strumming an acoustic guitar for the first few bars. Nevertheless, combined with a few flashes of colour in the instrumentation, it’s enough to result in an album that coheres from start to finish.

For its deployment of something approaching a hook, Cheated Hearts is surely a future hit, a riot of feminine confusion and a riff that thunders into view like a hungry dinosaur. Turn Into is the most immediate thing that Yeah Yeah Yeahs have put their name to — another oblique paean to an overcrowded relationship, this time sweetened by a keyboard solo that struggles not to turn into Dion’s The Wanderer.

It would be stretching it just a touch to say that there’s a good pop album buried beneath the debris — both sonic and emotional — that forms the outer layer of Show Your Bones. Nevertheless, three listens in and the tunes stack in your head like planes.

Uniquely among their New York peers — the Strokes, Radio 4, !!! — Yeah Yeah Yeahs sound unafraid of our expectations. And rightly so, given the ease with which they have surpassed them.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs podcast

New York’s finest, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, join Kanye West, Orson and Corinne Bailey Rae as the latest stars of our free weekly music interview podcasts.

Hear the art-punk trio tell in detail the story behind the recording of their new album, Show Your Bones, and chat to Pete Paphides about rhinestone leotards, breaking vital bones and drinking tequila in the Californian desert. Plus, listen in to hear tracks from the new album including the current single, Gold Lion.

No registration or fee is necessary. If you’re connected to the internet you’re ready to receive our free podcasts. Go to www.timesonline.co.uk/podcasts or iTunes.