Almost every time we get in the car, my biggest little one demands, "Play the one-two-three-four song, daddy!" It’s known more commonly as the White Stripes’ "Hotel Yorba," but Henry has latched onto the repeated chorus that counts right up to his age. Of course, he also seems to like it because it has a good beat and you can hop to it, and that appears to be the reason he digs everything from the Wu-Tang Clan to Sleater-Kinney.

Some parents would consider hardcore rappers, grrrl-punks, and bluesy garage-rock minimalists too raw, too hard, and maybe too sexual for their children’s ears. In response, I’d note that kids thrive on raw, hard pleasures at least as much as the rest of us do, and that that their innocence filters out most of the naughty bits (sexual or otherwise). But since that filter is as delicate as children themselves are, I feel comfortable sharing these bands with my son only because we don’t share their darker pleasures equally. I mean, it’s hard enough for most grown-ups to decipher the Wu-Tang’s raps.

This summer, however, two new kids’ discs arrived that proudly proclaim their tot-sized badness front and center. No! (Idlewild/ Rounder) features new compositions by America’s longest running experimental nerd-pop duo, They Might Be Giants. The Bottle Let Me Down: Songs for Bumpy Wagon Rides collects new and old kids’ songs by artists associated with Bloodshot Records, the maverick Americana label whose roots records usually kick like rye whiskey. By conservative standards — by Barney standards — both of these discs includes elements better left to adults. But by my standards, that makes them better for kids, too. Not only does it leave them some room to grow, but it creates a space where White Stripes fans of all ages can share the pleasure of kids’ music together.

Granted, no genre-hopping lo-fi musical duo could be less like the White Stripes than They Might Be Giants. Whereas every number that Jack and Meg White perform is steam-pressed with sexual heat, John Flansburgh & John Linnell’s postmodern folk, as Michael Azerrad notes in his recent New Yorker profile, "doesn’t sell sex; it sells smart-kid whimsy." That’s why a kids’ album seems so logical for TMBG, and why No! gives their whimsy a purpose that it hasn’t had in years (the CD also includes nice interactive animated videos for your CD-ROM). That purpose isn’t always enough to make their absurdist jingles do more than jangle parents’ nerves, especially through the middle third of the disc. But the lightness of goofy tunes like "Violin" and "Wake Up Call" is a relief after TMBG’s overblown last album, Mink Car.

Lightness is often the album’s greatest lyric asset as well. The opening third floats on modest no-nos like "Fibber Island" ("Here on Fibber Island no one sings along," croons Flansburgh, just as a chipmunk chorus starts singing along) and the title track ("All nos lead to no, no, no"). The mood peaks with the soaring psychedelic pop of "Where Do They Make Balloons?" which was co-written and is sung by the duo’s bassist, Danny Weinkauf. And it’s recaptured in the final three numbers, a trilogy about the only element of childhood innocence that lasts intact into adulthood — the innocence of sleep. Even here, naughtiness peeks out on the rowdy march "Bed Bed Bed," only to be trumped by Linnell’s beautifully mysterious "Sleepwalkers."

Nothing on The Bottle Let Me Down quite matches the odd grace of "Sleepwalkers," but overall the Bloodshot compilation is the meatier record, in part because it goes beyond songs about little ones’ sleep to touch on the Big Sleep (you know, death) and its adult inverse (you know, sex). Of course, the sex remains a hidden hint on Kelly Hogan’s coquettish rendition of "Rubber Duckie." And when death isn’t just a plainspoken fact, as on the Waco Brothers’ lovely version of "The Fox" (which they learned from a Burl Ives record), it’s subverted, as on Hogan’s version of "Señor El Gato," in which the smell of fish revives a corpse.

But anything less than that would feel alien to the artistic temperament of Robbie Fulks, Alejandro Escovedo, and Trailer Bride, who like the White Stripes prefer their music on the raw, hard, and sexy side. In fact, a rudimentary, high-stepping, country sing-along like "Hotel Yorba" would fit in perfectly in this collection, which ranges from bright rockabilly to singer-songwriter folk to super-speedy bluegrass, and whose numerous highlights mediate between warm innocence and wicked abandon with the same loose, gleeful imagination. The album isn’t rock and roll (or punk or hip-hop) any more than No! is, but both efforts elicit the same welcome response: "Play it again, daddy!"