The Pipettes like to play hard to get, but you still might have a good time

The women of the Pipettes are masters at playing hard to get. Over tight blasts of girl-group guitar pop, the British trio excoriates boring boys (“Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me”), overly handsy boys (“Sex”) and boys with bad record collections (“ABC”).

But RiotBecki, Gwenno and Rosay’s coldest shoulder seems to have been saved for their North American fans, who have waited over a year for their debut album “We Are the Pipettes” to be released, this time on Interscope.

“We just didn’t have the funding,” RiotBecki said of her band’s difficulty in getting a stateside release for the album. “It took us that long to find a label that understood what we wanted to do.”

If record labels are balking at a fashion-forward girl group with ace harmonies and impeccable indie cred (the Pipettes were initially svengalied by members of British bands Blue States and the Go! Team), the industry is in worse shape than we thought. Their matching polka-dot dresses and purposefully faceless male backing band get them tons of magazine spreads, but the Pips’ secret is that every song they make is close to perfect. Though they’re quick to cite the Spector of early teen-pop, the tunes are less Ronettes and more Paul Weller, evoking the wink-nudge dance party of the B-52’s more than the Marvelettes’ moon-eyed heartsickness.

“There’s an indie-punk, DIY ethos in what we do,” RiotBecki said. “What’s the point in having a guitar break when you don’t need one? We wanted to make an album that didn’t have filler.”

Even at 16 tracks, filler is tough to come by on “We Are the Pipettes.” Only one song cracks the three-minute mark, and their choreographed live show is a charmingly lo-fi tribute to nights spent singing into bedroom mirrors with a hairbrush for a microphone.

Another (recently reunited) British girl group tried this formula once in the ‘90s, but the Pips’ are hoping that their masterminded pop will be taken a bit more seriously.

“The Spice Girls took the ideas behind the Riot Grrrl movement to a place where it wasn’t really intended to go,” RiotBecki said. “They’ll always be remembered, but not for their music. Our ambitions are to write the best pop songs ever.”

-- August.Brown@latimes.com

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THE PIPETTES

WHERE: Echoplex, 1154 Glendale Blvd., L.A.

WHEN: 7 p.m. next Thursday

PRICE: $15

INFO: (213) 413-8200; www.attheecho.com