By Jeremiah Tucker

Globe columnist

The Crystals' single "He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)" is probably one of the most unsettling songs in pop music history.

Just look at the chorus: "He hit me and it felt like a kiss (felt like a kiss)/ He hit me and I knew he loved me/ If he didn't care for me/ I could have never made him mad/ But he hit me and I was glad."

Written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, "He Hit Me" is reportedly about Little Eva (of "Locomotion" fame) who took her boyfriend's abuse as a sign of his love, and as sung plaintively without a hint of judgment or irony by either The Crystals or Phil Spector's swelling, romantic production, the song is just creepy. Spector eventually pulled the song after complaints began pouring into radio stations, even though he probably didn't have a problem with the song's sentiment.

However, "He Hit Me" seems to be the logical conclusion of the girl-group craze because the nave, blissful innocence that defines most of these songs isn't real, and if it were, then the extreme lovesick passivity of "He Hit Me" shouldn't be surprising. For every "You Don't Own Me" by Leslie Gore there were hundreds of songs similar to "He's Got the Power" by The Exciters. (BTW, Lesley Gore recently came out as a lesbian. Just a little trivia.)

Yet, the girl-group sound of the mid-'60s is my favorite genre of music. I'm a sucker for the ratcheted-up emotion packed into two-and-a-half minutes of pop glory. The performers were sassy and vivacious, breaking down barriers in the recording industry and imbuing every song with definitive takes on love and heartbreak. Plus they sang without the vocal epilepsy that Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and the rest of the modern "divas" popularized.

As Gene Seulatti puts it in the accompanying booklet to the four-disc 2005 Rhino box set "Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found (One Kiss Can Lead to Another)," "The best girl group records are simply some of the most joyful manifestations of being young/in love/out of love - hell, alive - ever committed to tape."

Precociously and lovingly packaged in a black-and-white pillbox hat box, "Girl Group Sounds" is perfect. While Rhino couldn't acquire the rights to Phil Spector's songs - which are all available on the box set "Phil Spector: Back to Mono" anyway - their absence freed up room for a slew of unearthed gems. The set is a glorious mix of stone-cold classics with forgotten songs that are just as good, such as Dolly Parton's "Don't Drop Out," her lone foray into pure pop.

The Chiffons, Lesley Gore, The Shirelles, The Ronettes, The Angels, they're all here; however, the secret weapon of the set is the songs you would never hear if not for Rhino. For instance, "Egyptian Shumba" by The Tammys is one of the most peculiar girl group songs I've ever heard, sounding like the modern freak folkers the Animal Collective produced the song as the Tammys' Chipmunk-harmonizing bleeds into refrains of backup singers mimicking shrieking monkeys. Catchy and eclectic, it would blow the minds of indie-music blogs everywhere if released today.

Perhaps for reasons of nostalgia or a recognition of the genre's potential, the girl-group sound is becoming fashionable once again. A good example is a hard-to-find 2003 compilation "Ragazza Pop," which features contributions from Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker and indie-pop bands such as The Aislers Set doing their best girl group impressions. The standout is a cut from singer/songwriter Mirah, who melts every girl-group song ever penned into the heartbreaking "Don't."

In the last few years, quite a few bands have flirted with the classic sound, including Camera Obscura and El Perro Del Mar, who released a string-laden single earlier this year that typifies the genre with "God Knows (You've Gotta Give to Get)." However, the girl group poised to make the biggest splash is The Pipettes, who embrace everything about the genre while at the same time modernizing it. Mixed in among the standard lovey-dovey mash are lyrics such as "I don't love you/I don't want you/ Leave me alone/ You're just a one-night stand," letting you know who is in control. Promiscuity is the new passivity.

The Pipettes have the sound down pat, with great harmonizing, cute, seemingly improvisatory exclamations, handclaps, lovelorn ballads and two-minute songs bursting with exuberance. Live, they even wear matching polka-dot dresses and do choreographed hand movements to the songs, and the girls built hype the old-fashioned way - by releasing a string of fantastic singles ("Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me," "Dirty Mind" and "Pull Shapes").

On July 20, the group's debut album, "We Are the Pipettes," drops in the United Kingdom, a country that has a better palate for pop music than America. However, with a funny video for "Pull Shapes" that perfectly captures the group's aesthetic and sense of fun just released, hopefully, the group can build up enough steam to cross the Atlantic.

Address correspondence to Jeremiah Tucker, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, Mo. 64802.