Grade: A –

It’s terrible, what “dance rock” has come to mean.

It’s come to mean unnecessarily tight pants, popped collars, effeminate gestures and usually some connection to Pete Wentz. But really, dance rock sounds something like The Rapture.

The four-piece’s latest album, “Pieces of the People We Love” is Gnarls Barkley jamming with the Kaiser Chiefs — and that’s not entirely speaking metaphorically. Two tracks were produced by Gnarls producer/co-mastermind Danger Mouse, and one of those tracks features background vocals from Gnarls’ resident soul machine, Cee-Lo Green. But beyond that, “Pieces of the People We Love” is something more.

The Rapture makes people who don’t dance well want to dance a lot, all the time. From the irresistible cowbell groove of “Don Gon Do It,” to the driving anthem about driving, “First Gear,” to the endlessly hummable hidden track, there is very little to dislike here. This is party music. This is driving music. This is running music. This is music for motion.

Vocalists Mattie Safer and Luke Jenner both sound vaguely like Killers frontman Brandon Flowers, but it’s clear they are not Flowers imitators, nor nearly as pretentious. Their band also could draw comparisons to the Killers, but this would be ill-founded and inaccurate. This music certainly has keyboards, but The Rapture have no desire to be Duran Duran. They wouldn’t mind being Gang Of Four, but they’d rather be considerably more fun. As a result, “Pieces of the People We Love” may not be revolutionary or especially unique, but it’s way more fun than almost anything to hit record shelves this year.

The Rapture have been quietly doing its thing for years, slowly expanding a grassroots fanbase to be one of the largest club acts in Europe.

Now, with the Fueled By Ramen dance rock movement slowly dying, they seem perfectly poised to remind the world just what the term “dance rock” actually means.