This viral video vixen and onetime teen-pop hopeful made her MySpace mark last year with “Ur So Gay,” a reggae-lilted kiss-off to a sadsack indie-rock boyfriend who wears makeup, shops at H&M and avoids meat. Her album has more fun with gender-confused dating among high-maintenance twentysomethings—bicurious straight girls, boys who change their minds like girls, girls you can’t afford, tomboys who shave their legs so you’ll make out with them. Perry’s creative-writing-class punch lines don’t always justify her self-congratulatory drag-queen tone. But she hiccups quirkily enough, and myriad big-name producers (from Dr. Luke to Glen Ballard) keep the new-wave synth hooks hopping. “Hot N Cold” shamelessly camps up the aerobic electro of Cher’s “Believe.” When tempos slow and the sarcastic mood turns sincere, things bland out—but those moments are rare, and “Lost” feels outer-space-lonely enough to pull off its melancholy.

DOWNLOAD “One of the Boys,” “Self Inflicted”