In “Holy, Holy, Holy Moses (for New Orleans)” Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s Alec Ounsworth is reluctant to assert too great a role for himself in New Orleans’ drama. In the song, the Philadelphia native asks, “How can I claim New Orleans?” but he can’t escape Katrina’s impact, because what happened to us happened to everybody. “My faith got shook / and my mom got drunk,” he sings at one point, then asserts “I’m a stranger to my own homeland,” in another.

It’s the most dramatic moment in the album he cut earlier this summer at Piety Street Recording with producer Steve Berlin. For the occasion, Berlin assembled a core band that included George Porter, Jr., Stanton Moore and Robert Walter, but Ounsworth’s musical voice remains dominant. His borderline-yelped vocals and impressionistic lyrics imply a personal, desperate vision, one that mourns “all this useless beauty” in the rocking opener, “Modern Girl (…with Scissors).” Soon, though, Porter and Moore create a slinky, sinister stomp for “Bones in the Grave,” and the local contingent adds the ghost of a second line rhythm here, a brass conversation there and surging trombones to push along “This is Not My Home (after Bruegel).” But rather than sound like an amalgam of genres and styles, Mo Beauty presents an effective, eclectic incarnation of Crescent City rock ’n’ roll—one that shouldn’t require two people from outside the city to assemble.