Did you ever try buildr? I've never used sbt, as, coming from a Ruby background, the fact that buildr sits atop of rake appealed to me more than sbt. It uses maven repositories underneath the hood, but then again, as I understand it, so does clojure-leiningen.

Part of me thinks you're conflating two separate things: build systems and package repository systems. Even people who hate Maven's build system (myself included) tend to agree that Maven's package management system is really good, and as you like clojure-leiningen, you must agree in some sense.