Our 150 Favorite Indie Rock Albums of the 21st Century

About eight years ago, we put together a list of the best indie rock records of the ’00s, as the first decade of the new millennium seemed to be an unusually fertile time for independent music, in addition to sparking more widespread attention from outside college radio and record store clerks. But now that we’re a full 25 years in, it felt like time to expand and extend that list to something more far-reaching and comprehensive, catching up on what’s happened in the 15 years since while taking a broad view of some of the greatest indie rock albums of the 21st century.

After we tallied our votes, we started out with a ranked hierarchy of the two-plus decades’ “best” indie rock albums. But after starting to question the rankings and whether or not something was missing or other artists or scenes were overrepresented, we sort of collectively said “Fuck it,” and opted to present the list in chronological order, as our favorite indie rock albums of the century rather than the “best.” I’m not saying this is going to be the norm, but we’re taking this moment to level with you, the reader, just a little: Our list is entirely subjective—even when it comes to the definition of what “indie rock” is (boy, we had some discussions about that)—and we’d rather offer a list that’s fun to read and fun to talk about, and for that matter fun to write about, than to try to redefine the indie rock canon.

Being as this is a list of our favorite indie rock records of the past 25 years, there are going to be some omissions, some unusual inclusions perhaps, and some years are a little heavier weighted than others. We didn’t want to get too fussy with it, other than to make sure that we didn’t leave out anything we felt strongly enough about. And on that note, if there happens to be one highly conspicuous absence from this list, well, Google the band’s name and that should explain it.

To honor the original list we put together, we kept many of those albums in this updated version, and even featured many of the blurbs written for the 2017 list—if our writers nailed it the first time, why abandon a good thing? We hope you enjoy reading it, because we sure had a lot of fun putting this together.

Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums included are chosen by our editors and contributors.

At the Drive-In – Relationship of Command (2000)

At the Drive-In’s refusal to adhere to any remotely conventional structure or ideas—whether related songwriting, delivery, timbre, tunings, timing, structure and even form—made the band led by Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Jim Ward and Omar Rodríguez-López a deceptively esoteric objet d’art. That they managed to meld melody and rhythm into their seemingly esoteric melee remains a magic track that no other band has mimicked ever since. Detractors dismissed At the Drive-In’s magnum opus as a prog-rock misadventure, but those who connected with the record held it tight, because it captured the emotional rollercoaster one felt during the turbulent, tense times of Y2K. – Kurt Orzeck

Listen: Spotify

Bright Eyes – Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

In 2000 the term “emo” still stood for emotional hardcore. Singer/songwriter Conor Oberst was making experimental indie folk at this time but with a darker mood lurking beneath. Oberst’s lyrics were possessed by such raw honesty, however, that his sophomore album found the project inevitably referred to from the outside as “emo.” In truth, it’s an emotionally heavy release, one that includes a fake interview that spins a yarn about his mother drowning his siblings to add another layer of sardonic irony to the proceedings. Oberst’s voice was at his most distinctive in these songs, giving a backbone to the shifting identity of the project in the years to come. – Wil Lewellyn

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

PJ Harvey – Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000)

The four studio LPs that Polly Jean Harvey made before this tectonic shift of a record all provided invaluable insights into the heart, mind and soul of the singer/songwriter from Dorset. But we can at least agree that, with the more polished pop songwriting of Stories from the City, Harvey blossomed into a more social creature as she transmogrified herself from her rawer earlier incarnations into a more cosmopolitan, robust and confident version of herself—while never sacrificing a single speck of her credibility along the way. It’s as deft a move as an artist can make. – Kurt Orzeck

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Modest Mouse – The Moon & Antarctica (2000)

Modest Mouse entered the new millennium by turning their weirdo Americana-tinged indie rock into speculative major-label rock, albeit on their terms. They traded in lawlessness and trucker diaries for a telescope, not only expanding their lyrical focus but their songwriting too. The Moon & Antarctica looks at the conceit that no man is an island with trepidation, spiraling into thoughts about life in space, and if there is indeed alien life, how do we connect with them? By smoothing out their sound, Modest Mouse paved the way for indie rock’s facelift in the aughts. However, there’s a crucial element that slicker acts forgot that The Moon & Antarctica held dear—the sun will one day explode and we’ll all die. – Colin Dempsey

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Elliott Smith – Figure 8 (2000)

During the second encore of a two-night run at Los Angeles’ Wiltern theater in 2000, timed right around both the November presidential election and Halloween, Elliott Smith performed an out-of-left-field cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” That’s not the Elliott Smith that most people remember, but it’s the one that takes up most of Figure 8. His last finished album before his untimely death in 2003, Figure 8 is Smith in rock ‘n’ roll mode, turning up the amps, stepping on overdrive and shedding, for a brief moment, the image of sensitive guy with an acoustic guitar. That guy’s here too, on “Someone That I Used to Know” and “Everything Reminds Me of Her,” he’s just not the dominant personality. Instead, we get the fully realized potential of a songwriting talent like Smith with the major-label budget to match. He lets the riffs blaze in “Son of Sam,” pulls out some pick scratches on “L.A.” and even takes on full-blown orchestral majesty on “Happiness” and “Can’t Make A Sound.” That they’re also some of his most affecting songs does away with the idea of intimacy being his most potent asset. Smith was a complicated person, but like most of us, he too just wanted to rock ‘n’ roll all nite. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Shellac – 1000 Hurts (2000)

At the dawn of the millennium, Shellac released an album that would set the standard for 21st century noise rock. Through 1000 Hurts’ standout moments such as “Prayer to God,” “Watch Song,” and “Squirrel Song,” the Chicago trio crafted three longstanding live fan favorites. Bob Weston did some of his best bass work on “Song Against Itself,” whilst Steve Albini’s guitar riffing on “Canaveral” and “Shoe Song” proved equally impressive in terms of how rapidly it shifted about all over the place. 1000 Hurts now serves as a particularly evocative document of a point in musical history, as well as a melancholic reminder of how great three friends sounded making music together. – Greg Hyde

Read More: 20 Essential Albums Recorded by Steve Albini

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (2000)

Yo La Tengo have historically had a few modes of operation: shoegazing noise-pop songs; James McNew-fronted janglers; and whisper-quiet slowcore lullabies. Most of the time they cram variations of all of these onto one album, like the ambitious I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One. But And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out is different. Momentarily shedding their walls of fuzz and feedback (save for centerpiece “Cherry Chapstick”), Yo La Tengo turn the lights low and offer a collection of songs that are sweet, dreamy and unprecedentedly intimate. At times, Ira Kaplan is barely audible; his vocals on the romantic “Our Way to Fall”—a song about his own relationship with drummer Georgia Hubley—sound like he’s sharing a closely held secret. When Hubley and Kaplan harmonize during the chorus of “Tears Are in Your Eyes,” a transcendent peak on what’s arguably the album’s best song, the band reveals a level of beauty that’s surprising for even them. It’s not just that And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out is the band’s prettiest album—though it is—but that somehow a team of indie rock veterans nearly two decades deep into their career were still capable of revealing something entirely surprising. – Jeff Terich

Read More: The everyday mystery of Yo La Tengo’s And Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

The Dismemberment Plan – Change (2001)

The Dismemberment Plan started off as a noisy and agitated punk band—one defined by their own unabashedly fun live sets—so by the time they released Change, it seemed like they were starting to pump the brakes a bit. They likely didn’t plan it as their (then-) final album at the time, but the starkness of “Automatic” and the breezy pacing of “Sentimental Man” certainly suggested that, at the very least, their punk rock days were behind them. In contrast to its predecessor, Emergency & I, The Dismemberment Plan’s Change feels more measured and meditative, a pretty yet melancholy post-punk recording that traded late-twenties angst and almost caricaturistic nervousness for ruminations on death (“Face of the Earth”), autonomy (“Following Through”) and finding strength in the mundane (“Superpowers”). There are no exclamation points on Change, merely ellipses—it simply couldn’t work as a punk album by design. Change is awash in shades of earth tone, embracing adulthood through unexpectedly poignant realism. – Jeff Terich

Listen: Spotify

Fugazi – The Argument (2001)

Fugazi never officially broke up. As far as the official story goes, they’re still on hiatus—in a 2011 interview bassist Joe Lally even entertained the idea of recording another Fugazi album, however far off that prospect might be. Yet if the end of the story is The Argument, it’d still be one of the greatest career-closers of all time. Fugazi had spent more than a decade recording and performing with a strict D.I.Y. ethos—inexpensive ticket prices and albums, no complicated effects setups, all ages audiences. And when reality made maintaining that approach unrealistic, the band eased back, wrapping up one last statement of art-punk innovation before retiring to a cozy Dischord House desk job.

The Argument, whether intended as a final album or not, is a singular album in Fugazi’s discography. It’s their most experimental and atmospheric by some measure, easing off of more full-throated hardcore beatdowns in favor of unexpectedly psychedelic punk songs that twist into compelling, beautiful shapes. The band often doubled up drums in the studio, resulting in stereo-surround post-hardcore expressionism. Elsewhere, they let off the overdrive on the anti-war title track or the anti-gentrification “Cashout.” From a musical perspective, it’s Fugazi’s most unconventional album, but in terms of its politics it’s still a very human statement, reinforcing the ethos that held the band together throughout their career. The Argument feels like a beacon of wisdom in a world desperately in need of direction; Fugazi might never return in any recognizable form, but we’ll be OK as long as we still have this roadmap to guide us. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

The Microphones – The Glow Pt. 2 (2001)

It’s easy to run into superlatives about Phil Elverum and, given its quite rapturous language, wariness is understandable. This is the singular record best capable of dispelling those concerns. Not that others across his projects aren’t excellent, but The Glow nestles itself closest to the heart of his overall project, a fuzzy ball of lo-fi guitars and spoke-sung vocals, a hybrid of Nick Drake and Bob Dylan wrapped in the buzzy hiss of great ’80s and ’90s underground records. By bypassing so directly the normal trappings of indie folk, that being romance and its struggles, Elverum paints a universal picture of the human heart wrapped in mystery, a sentiment which swoops you up no matter where you are. – Langdon Hickman

Read More: A Beginner’s Guide to Mount Eerie and The Microphones

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

The Strokes – Is This It (2001)

On their 2001 debut Is This It, New York City’s The Strokes channeled muddy feedback and distortion into retro garage rock gold. Big city sleaze set to fuzz, with frontman Julian Casablancas blasting out the kind of no-fucks-to-give sentiment that’s only found in early adulthood. Here, simple riffs are everything—K.I.S.S theory in practice. And at a total run time of 35 minutes it doesn’t last long. Fit for dive bars with beer stained floors and late nights on weekdays, indeed—this is it. – J. Smith

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Spoon – Girls Can Tell (2001)

They’d probably argue differently, but being dropped from a major label might have been the best thing to happen to Spoon. After their 1998 album A Series of Sneaks was released via Elektra to little attention, promotion or marketing efforts, the band found themselves back in the realm of the indies, where they ended up regrouping, penning a couple of slanderous revenge songs and then releasing this glorious masterpiece of a rock record. It’s sparse and economical, owing to both Some Girls-era Stones and Wire’s late ’70s post-punk. Those go together better than you’d think; “Believing is Art,” “Chicago at Night” and “Everything Hits At Once” groove sexier than any indie songs I know of, but display a level of melodic complexity within their restraint. They make it look so effortless, but that kind of ease can be a nearly impossible feat to pull off. – Jeff Terich

Read More: Spoon redefined themselves on Girls Can Tell

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Unwound – Leaves Turn Inside You (2001)

Unwound are far from the only band to bow out on a high. Yet never has there been such a case of don’t-know-what-you-got-till-it’s-gone as when Unwound released Leaves Turn Inside You. The Tumwater, Washington trio steadily built up a career of pounding post-hardcore and noise rock abstractions throughout the ’90s only to reinvent themselves entirely on their final double-album. Justin Trosper, Vern Ramsey and Sara Lund could craft wiry punk numbers such as “December” and “Look a Ghost” in their sleep by this point; Leaves Turn Inside You was about how far they could spiral outward and still sound like Unwound. The results skew from triumphant art rock (“Off This Century”) to haunted post-punk (“October All Over”) and glacial post-rock (“Below The Salt”). And they covered four sides of vinyl in the process, proving that not only did Unwound have the vision but the wealth of material to build their most ambitious and finely crafted album. – Jeff Terich

Read More: Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You was a breathtaking final bow

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – Source Tags & Codes (2002)

Where another website might have given this album a perfect score only to disparage the group for the rest of their career, our stance is more celebratory. Trail of Dead is three bands in one; a post-hardcore group, a progressive rock group, and a hoary hard rock group a la The Who or Deep Purple. Certain records in their career have explored each of these facets to varying degrees, but Source Tags and Codes is the first one where the alchemy came together. They’ve been a great band since their debut and as of their currently final record XI, they’re still making great material. But this was the tipping point, the precise moment they revealed themselves as both players and songwriters to be worthy of the same esteem given to groups like Fugazi. – Langdon Hickman

Listen: Spotify

Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People (2002)

If You Forgot it in People were an object it would be a haunted house. Not in a spooky, ghost-in-the-attic way, but a memory-heavy, skeletons-in-the-closet way. Broken lovers, swallowed words, the former version of oneself; Broken Social Scene’s breakthrough sophomore album is alive, breathing inches from the mic. The Toronto collective contains a literal fuck-ton of all-star musicians, and this record places listeners at the center of it all; the revolving door, the orchestral moments, and its many bells and whistles. You Forgot it in People contains all the explosiveness and melodrama found in early-aughts indie rock, but favors truth and passion over empty theatrics and platitudes. – Patrick Pilch

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Neko Case – Blacklisted (2002)

Chalk the artist-as-roadkill Blacklisted cover image of Neko Case beneath a van’s bumper up to gallows humor, perhaps, but the singer/songwriter’s third album is alt-country at its most breathtakingly gothic. Descended from a blood-streaked American folk music tradition, updated with contemporary terrors such as air disasters and the Green River Killer, Blacklisted is Case’s most unabashedly dark album, given extra stunning shades of obsidian via backing arrangements from members of Calexico and The Sadies and Case’s own singular set of pipes. Amid the darkness and fear, however, Case conjures up more than a few romantic images, whether offering a melancholy skyward gaze on “I Wish I Was the Moon” or adding an extra dose of mystique to Sarah Vaughan’s “Look For Me (I’ll Be Around)”. Endlessly rich and deceptively stark, Blacklisted often leaves its mark with little more than a touch of reverb and a looming shadow. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Interpol – Turn On the Bright Lights (2002)

I’ve written before about how hearing The White Stripes’ Elephant significantly improved my relationship with music at the dawn of the 21st century. There was, however, another album black and white and red all over that helped [re]open my ears to new directions in sound at that pivotal time in my life. From the same long-gone coworker who curated Jack and Meg White for me came the sullen echoes of this particular debut from this particular New York quartet. “Oh, I will surprise you sometime/I’ll come around when you’re down”—words from a patient friend, perhaps, the motto of a wandering ghost, or the results of a work of art that lingers as inspiration. This is wisdom and biography heard early in “Untitled,” the opening salvo of Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights, likely the moment when post-punk transformed into post-punk revival for hoi polloi music fans. This is also history repeating itself on many levels, not the least of which is the importance of when you speak and to whom you speak.

So-called millennials, depending on your research, would have been approaching or just cracking adulthood as Turn on the Bright Lights hit store shelves. Their perceived disaffections needed an outlet, a spokesperson, a scapegoat. Interpol delivered the first true snapshot of New York City—and society, for what it’s worth—in a post-9/11 world, with most recording starting just two months after those terrorist attacks and the album coming out just shy of their one-year anniversary. To me, “NYC” has turned into a post-mortem on the fall of the World Trade Center, the centerpiece lyric “New York cares” simultaneously addressing teamwork and acknowledging a guarded step back from the “Love” in the city’s well-worn advertising slogan. “NYC” makes macro the more personal, individual micro-issues addressed elsewhere across the album: lost love in “PDA,” lost life in “Obstacle 1,” the imperfect sexual character studies of “Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down” and “Hands Away.”

Yes, Paul Banks and his bandmates played the parts of Ian Curtis and Joy Division to the hilt, aided by dream-pop’s enveloping production and R.E.M.’s bag of tricks with language and guitar riffs. (Look to “Roland” as a thrilling, chilling microcosm of the album.) On its face Turn on the Bright Lights could be considered well-executed mimicry. Even its loudest champions acknowledge this history repeating itself; it’s neither the first nor the last album constructed as such. What really makes Interpol and this album legend is what Robert Christgau called in The Village Voice “luxurious cynicism”—a critical epithet at the time, but also a defining sound for the conflicts and concerns raised on record. – Adam Blyweiss

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Low – Trust (2002)

Trust sits at a special middle point in Low’s discography. They had not yet quite been a band for ten years in 2002, but with five albums already released it was a period of rapid development. 2001’s Things We Lost in the Fire ramped up the intensity and accessibility of their music, and the following year Trust bore both the trademark turned-down slowcore and some of the more emphatic electronic embellishments that would mark their later work. The result is just as beautifully haunting, but refined into a more cohesive vision. With the death of Mimi Parker and the long view of history it’s impossible not to periodize, either in grief or gratitude or both. In that project of memory, Trust stands as an essential artifact of Low as it was and would be. – Flora James

Read More: Celebrate the Catalog: The complete Low discography

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Mclusky – Mclusky Do Dallas (2002)

Welsh noise rock trio Mclusky were notably tight for a post-hardcore outfit, but they always held onto their genre. In 2002, Mclusky Do Dallas was a flicker of hope for reviving rock’s true grit. Razor sharp hooks waltz around frontman Andy Falkous’ manic vocals, which brilliantly wail on politics, selling out and bands with fake tits. The band’s self-awareness matches their blatant criticisms. Mclusky berate scenes and hero worship, keeping tongue-in-cheek on songs like “Fuck this Band,” singing, “Fuck this band/Cos they swear too much.” The Steve Albini-produced sophomore effort builds post-hardcore chaos on a cleaner surface, making it an outlier at the time of the album’s release. But Mclusky Do Dallas is Mclusky’s statement that achieves what they do best—never taking themselves too seriously. – Patrick Pilch

Read More: Mclusky Do Dallas reveled in pure, destructive fun

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

The Mountain Goats – Tallahassee (2002)

Tallahassee, the Mountain Goats’ seventh album (but the first to be recorded with a proper band and studio) follows the story of a couple who move into a house on Southwood Plantation Road, Tallahassee, in the hopes of reinvigorating a desperate and dying marriage. To summarize the remainder of the album in brief: it doesn’t work. Instead, John Darnielle gives us a hypnotic character study, rich with poignant imagery and as blisteringly emotional as it is absurdly hilarious, as he follows the lives of two people who really, really ought to break up. Although, if they did, there’d be no album. So, silver linings? – Ed Brown

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Pedro the Lion – Control (2002)

David Bazan has never been afraid to write songs about terrible people who make bad decisions. He’s channeled doom-and-gloom Old Testament prophets across multiple monikers for his entire career, and with his 2002 Jade Tree album, Control, he created a masterwork of Southern Gothic lyrical themes and Pacific Northwest indie rock. Channeling both Flannery O’Connor and Sunny Day Real Estate, it’s a concept album about two cheating spouses and the destructive consequences of their actions. Bazan’s laconic vocals and biting lyrics provide tremendous aural contrast, while the thick bass tone, syncopated snare claps, and gritty guitar licks rage with intensity. From sad-sack andante to pissed-off allegro, the 10-song record speaks to sex, religion, infidelity, passion, and destruction with zeal. It’s the human condition in 40 minutes. – Adam P. Newton

Read More: The self-therapy of Pedro the Lion

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Rilo Kiley – The Execution of All Things (2002)

Only months after the release of Rilo Kiley’s sophomore album, The Execution of All Things, another project featuring Jenny Lewis—The Postal Service’s Give Up—was met with both critical acclaim and commercial success, selling a million copies and becoming the second best selling album in Sub Pop’s history. Which sucked up a lot of the air, maybe unfairly so, given that Rilo Kiley’s sophomore album is as gorgeously affecting as indie rock gets. It’s fitting that the band briefly claimed both Barsuk and Saddle Creek as their home, as their sound straddled the line between Death Cab for Cutie’s melancholy hookfests and Bright Eyes’ emo-twang (the group even includes a winking and sardonic reference to the music scene in Omaha). But the L.A. band’s brilliantly crafted pop sparkles with the sunrays and swimming pools of Laurel Canyon, each track on The Execution of All Things balancing a beautifully romantic atmosphere with the insecurities and anxieties that come with the directionlessness of youth.  – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Songs: Ohia – Didn’t It Rain (2002)

Jason Molina was Songs: Ohia. Jason Molina was also The Magnolia Electric Co., and before that brief moment in which his two worlds merged, Molina closed the book on the former by releasing one final statement of stark, bluesy elegance. Didn’t It Rain was Molina’s masterpiece, a graceful and gorgeous album of dirges and ballads that channeled gospel, soul and Delta blues through the smokestacks and gray hues of a slowly crumbling rust-belt landscape. Some of them are stripped down to the most basic essences of songs; they didn’t need much else. The progression in “Steve Albini’s Blues,” for instance, never changes. It never has to—in just two chords, Molina captured an achingly beautiful moment that feels like it’s meant to last forever. On the title track, wordless harmonies provide a breathtaking connective thread between Molina’s statements of raw humanity (“If I see you struggle, I will not turn my back“). Didn’t It Rain would break your heart if it didn’t have so much of its own to spare. It’s a rare album whose author finds beauty in the places where none expect to find it—in the blue factory flame and the big city moon, between the radio towers. – Jeff Terich

Read More: 12 Artists on their favorite Jason Molina songs

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

At times it’s difficult to imagine how Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot would be regarded were it not for the well-documented, surreal comedy of its pre-existence: rejected as an uncommercial “career-ender” by Reprise executives, whose e-mail servers were apparently down when Kid A went to no. 1. That legend had to have some impact on YHF’s legacy, and maybe would have been its sum total if Wilco had provided a remote and ungraspable slab of self-indulgence. But curios like that don’t survive time whatever publicity it gets, and YHF had too much humanity to be set aside.

Jeff Tweedy had already peeked out from the good-times curtain on 1999’s Summerteeth, which cast dark self-doubt against a fractured pop backdrop. On YHF the music followed as Tweedy’s lyrics went further upstream. “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” arrives as slowly as Tweedy’s shuttered realizations do, with tentative percussion and staggered reveals. “Radio Cure” and “I’m the Man Who Loves You” were opposite sides of a lover’s miscommunications: the first as a near-dirge, the second as a Muscle Shoals soul stomp.

The real testament to YHF’s endurance are three straight songs—“War On War,” “Jesus, Etc.”and “Ashes of American Flags”—which aimed towards America’s emotional reconciliation after 9/11, even though all were recorded well before the date of the attacks. In sweeping order they connote loss, renewal, inevitability and the soft permanence of certain wounds. They would have been true no matter what happened, and that’s why Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is every bit as good as the legend tells it to be. Maybe better. – Paul Pearson

Read More: Treble 100, No. 27: Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Broadcast – haha Sound (2003)

For a band that once held the distinction of being one of the only artists on Warp Records to use guitars, Broadcast seemed to erase most identifiable outlines of conventional instrumentation by their second album. Blessed by a set of increasingly obscure mid-century influences—krautrock, Syd Barrett, French yé-yé pop, Raymond Scott, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders—haha Sound is the full realization of an aesthetic painstakingly crafted for more than half a decade yet seemingly created from pure magic. On tracks like the Silver Apples-inspired single “Pendulum,” Broadcast let the wires show, revealing a buzzing and pulsing machine fused together with overheating machine-shop parts. Yet elsewhere, on the hypnotic “Man is Not a Bird” or the euphoric pop standout “Before We Begin,” Broadcast’s melodies are blurred at the edges, their effects made to sound vintage but curious at best to place, the honeyed voice of the late Trish Keenan providing the only tether back to the real world. But that place is much less appealing once you’ve paid a visit to Broadcast’s psychedelic sound world. Step inside haha Sound‘s sensory expanse and risk never wanting to leave it. – Jeff Terich

Read More: Treble 100, No. 87: Broadcast – haha Sound

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Cat Power – You Are Free (2003)

Though it’s perhaps an exaggeration to describe You Are Free as the Cat Power album that rocks the hardest, it’s at least technically true, in large part because of the then-anonymous drum contributions from Dave Grohl to standout moments like “He War” and “Speak For Me.” (The same year he provided a suitably aggressive pummel for Killing Joke, no less.) But most of the songs on You Are Free are more emotionally devastating than physically, particularly on the plainspoken chronicle of abused and tragically fated children in “Names,” or the heartbreaking “Good Woman,” featuring backing vocals from Eddie Vedder. But amid these moments of sorrow and ache is a confidence and command that sets You Are Free apart as one of Chan Marshall’s best, complete with a call to action in “Free” to separate yourself from the triviality of celebrity, something she’s never been terribly comfortable with: “Don’t fall in love with the autograph/Just fall in love when you scream that song.” – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)

Cursive – The Ugly Organ (2003)

As if the divorce saga of 2000’s Domestica wasn’t theatrical enough, Omaha’s Cursive spun the idea anew with The Ugly Organ after a brief disbanding, reframing the break-up album as a post-hardcore operetta with an even bleaker and more intense outlook. A turbulent saga marked by its organist interludes and the elegant touch of Gretta Cohn’s cello, The Ugly Organ is as much a cohesive, continuous piece of music as a set of disparate, standout moments. It’s as conceptual as emo, or at least emo-adjacent music, gets, with alternately beautiful and brutal results. It’s Cursive’s most beloved and arguably best album, a triumphant case study in building a better monster. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlanticism (2003)

The clean, gentle, indie-pop tenor of Transatlanticism belies (or, perhaps, accentuates) just how utterly, disembowlingly sad this record can be once you start paying attention to the lyrics. At its core, it’s an album that interrogates the way distance—physical, emotional, spiritual—can affect human relationships, and it knows just when the vivisection should be carried out with despair, nostalgia, or indeed, an intolerably gorgeous mixture of both. The spacey gleam of the guitars and the warm, reverberative hum of the keys on Transatlanticism won’t save you. But they will give you something very pretty to cry to. – Ed Brown

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

The Postal Service – Give Up (2003)

The process of musicians mailing each other CDs of experiments grown from prior stems may seem like a quaint notion in today’s world of file-sharing services and high-speed Internet. But the pauses inherent in that process let this one-off album of digitized rock balladry bloom from Dntel lead brain Jimmy Tamborello and Death Cab for Cutie lead singer Ben Gibbard, after working together on the 2001 Dntel song “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan.” Its harshest critics claim Give Up doesn’t live up to the standards set by these artists’ primary concerns, but I would argue Give Up is a standalone anomaly. The well-known love song “Such Great Heights” shows Gibbard comfortable piecing together performance and storytelling over sound that hews close to Tamborello’s IDM. Standout cuts “Recycled Air” and “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight,” meanwhile, find Tamborello able to soften his prickly production for a measure of pop accessibility. Music for airports? This is music for flight itineraries, shipping services, and not just the cloud but all of them. – Adam Blyweiss

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

The Rapture – Echoes (2003)

The Rapture burned briefly and brightly. Their 2003 debut Echoes is comfortably their finest hour; a dance-punk/art-rock banger that seamlessly fuses the organic and synthetic. In contrast to the polished cool of their peers and labelmates LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture’s debut is a ramshackle, skeletal work, full of scratchy guitars, house-inspired beats and frontman Luke Jenner’s raw, charismatic vocals. Tracks shift with thrilling abandon, ranging from the disco-rock of “Killing” to the Lou Reed balladry of “Open Up Your Heart” to the immortal dance-punk classic “House Of Jealous Lovers”. This track (which was a minor transatlantic hit) is not entirely representative of the eclectic album that birthed it, making a delve into the delights of Echoes all the more interesting for those who may only know its most famous dancefloor filler. -Tom Morgan

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow (2003)

“New Slang” was life-changing; in fact, the person whose life it changed the most was Shins frontman and songwriter James Mercer. That song brought Mercer out of New Mexico obscurity with his jangly indie pop group The Shins, and he’s since ended up as the sole permanent member of the band 15 years after their debut (with a handful of Broken Bells releases collabs with Danger Mouse in the intervening years). Yet while the band dissolved somewhat slowly, their last great moment together was 2003’s Chutes Too Narrow. Somewhat paradoxically, it’s the band’s most diverse album and their most cohesive alike, balancing garage rock, alt-country, psychedelic folk and chamber pop all in one best-of-indie mixtape. A lot of that has to do with the versatility of the band itself, who capture each stylistic deviation effortlessly. Yet Mercer himself remains the genius at the center of it all, wrapping even newer slang around tongue-twisting highbrow wordplay in “Saint Simon” and earnestly anxious melancholy in “Gone For Good.” The Shins might have always been Mercer’s band, but this is proof of the magic they made while they still were a band. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Songs: Ohia – Magnolia Electric Co. (2003)

The final Songs: Ohia album signaled a bold ante-upping for Jason Molina’s musical ambitions. The sound and arrangements have panoramic scope, grounded in country-rock but not monochromatically married to it. Molina’s voice didn’t lose its idiosyncrasies or gain perfect pitch, but it’d grown strong enough to rise clearly above a rollicking full-band sound.

These eight songs are cryptically plainspoken. They meant specific things to Molina, but used a vernacular anyone could embrace. They contain multitudes, ranging from (literal) apocalypse, heartbreak, and addiction to more measured introspection and even hope. Whether it’s Molina daring God (in the figure of John Henry) to “Swing that heaviest hammer ya got” or doing his best to hold on, you’re riveted. And you need look no further than the ascendance of MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Waxahatchee, and Ratboys to hear echoes of Songs: Ohia’s farewell transmission. – L.D. Flowers

Read More: Treble 100, No. 96: Songs: Ohia – Magnolia Electric Co.

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

The White Stripes – Elephant (2003)

I’ve written at length about what this album did for my life. What has Elephant done for you? “Fell in Love with a Girl” one album prior might have really put these exes-as-siblings on the map, but Elephant drove home to massive audiences just how much power two musicians could have. It sliced and diced garage rock and Carter-Cash country into something loud and edgy, yet full of pop-ready hooks and riffs. Backing up Jack White’s howls in both “There’s No Home for You Here” and a cover of “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself” with Meg White’s measured delivery in “In the Cold, Cold Night” echoed the kind of stylistic, loud-quiet-loud cartwheel Nirvana had turned a decade earlier. And what did you, in response, do for Elephant? Only transformed its centerpiece, a searing blues number about gossip that sounded like it was played by a much larger band, into the world’s foremost football cheer. – Adam Blyweiss

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Wrens – The Meadowlands (2003)

The Wrens were the same band in 2003 as they were in 1996, technically, but they were dramatically different people. Just like all their other recordings (see: Secaucus, Abbott 1135), The Meadowlands was named for a place of residence, with the brown house photo on the cover a chilling image of the site of the hardest lessons about growing up. The Meadowlands is, in other words, kind of a bummer. It’s a breakup album that veers from the defeated (“Happy”) to the angry (“Hopeless”) to the indecipherable (“Per Second Second”), all the while telling the story that few actual emo albums could capture in such melancholy realism. That the album actually comes across as catchy, fun and enjoyable in some of its most triumphant moments without sacrificing its gravitas is testament to how the band’s songwriting had matured as well. It was a new peak for the band, one whose follow-up never came, ultimately resulting in a splintering of the band nearly two decades later. Never meant to be a swan song, The Meadowlands is both an ellipsis and a deep sigh. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell (2003)

With all the hipster cool of new millennium art school grads, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs emerged in the early ’00s, delivering sparse arrangements and bare emotion on debut album Fever to Tell. Wearing her heart on her elaborately constructed sleeve, vocalist Karen O swaggers towards Mt. Olympus and rock-god status—as she shouts, whispers and screams through catharsis. Yes, “Maps” is here, that neutron bomb of a hit, but so are “Rich,” “Black Tongue”, “No No No” and the haunting album bookend “Modern Romance”. A total greater than the sum of its one offs—an offering equally as cohesive, as it is raw. – J. Smith

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Blonde Redhead – Misery Is a Butterfly (2004)

While critics like us can RIYL Blonde Redhead to death, the fact of the matter is they are a singular band that has yet to be accurately imitated, replicated or reproduced as a hologram. The trio has an unimpeachable streak, as evidenced by their unassailable oeuvre, but 2004’s Misery Is a Butterfly still stands as their crowning achievement. (A close runner-up is the album that preceded it: Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons.) Misery is such a transgressive and transcendent record, akin to the films of Terrence Malick, that terms such as “beauty,” “heartbreak” and “emotionally evocative” will always fall to do it justice. On their sixth effort, their band’s tragic, melancholic, quietly heart-wrenching art speaks a language all its own. – Kurt Orzeck

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand (2004)

Franz Ferdinand were once so confident about their own personal brand that they suggested all of their albums would be titled Franz Ferdinand, and simply change the colors of their rock ‘n’ roll expressionist logo. It’s a bold step for a new band. It’s not like bands haven’t done one or the other, but this seemed unusually cocky for a young band. But it’s easy to forget how much of an impact the band’s debut left in 2004. They were a cocky band, and in carrying the weight of both 30 years of post-punk history and another 15 or so of Britpop on their shoulders, the Glaswegian quartet took it upon themselves to take on both. ln doing so, they released one of the best albums in either genre of the entire decade.

Frontman Alex Kapranos, lanky and handsome and possessing a debonair croon, came across as part Jarvis Cocker and part Bryan Ferry fronting a more radio-friendly Gang of Four. That formula might look peculiar on paper, but it led to a massive hit in the form of “Take Me Out,” a shape- and tempo-shifting single that provided anthemic disco fodder via loud, jagged guitars. Franz Ferdinand made the promise of dancepunk into something more accessible, even commercial, and they manipulated it into bespoke shapes tailored in their own image: fiery riff-rock (“Jacqueline”), hook-laden post-punk (“The Dark of the Matinee”), dark dub (“Auf Achse”) and disco (“Come On Home”). Franz Ferdinand made imperfection sound impeccable and perfectly polished pop sound raw. They changed their mind about the album titles, by the way; they didn’t need to continue stamping their name in large typeface for everyone to understand they were hearing Franz Ferdinand. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

The Libertines – The Libertines (2004)

Beyond the self-titling, so definitive is The Libertines’ sophomore album that it crystallizes their famously blighted original run (by way of Carl Barât and Pete Doherty’s fraught songwriting kinship) down to the artwork. Even opener and mega-hit “Can’t Stand Me Now” addressed that volatility head on, with its bizarre discombobulated introduction setting the tracklist on a slipshod course that weaves in and out of structured time. From the faded psych of “The Ha Ha Wall” to cockney busker ballad “What Katie Did” and the runaway train of “Campaign of Hate”, to this day the record straddles the line of being ramshackle and brilliantly memorable, like getting sold contraband cigarettes out of someone’s back pocket in a pub smoking area. Or in the building when puffing indoors was still acceptable in 2004: a very on-brand accompaniment to The Libertines, in hindsight. – Elliot Burr

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

The Walkmen – Bows + Arrows (2004)

Formed after the acclaimed yet volatile Jonathan Fire*Eater predicted the New York ‘00s rock revival and flamed out too early to reap its rewards, The Walkmen—featuring three-fifths of that group—reshaped their vintage aesthetics and searing energy into a band at once more contemplatively and incendiary. They bridge the gaps between those endpoints on their spectacular second album, Bows + Arrows, an album somehow dubiously described as both “garage rock revival” and “post-punk revival” at the time without sounding much like either, though the heavy hitting “Little House of Savages” does the former better than any of their peers could, and “The Rat” renders the latter obsolete. For all its energy and urgency, it’s a complicated affair, a rock ‘n’ roll album that veers off into twinkly daydreams, stumbles through music hall bloozers and still allows The Walkmen enough time to let their most righteous noises out. And of course there’s “The Rat,” a linearly structured sprint that casts aside the drudgery of verse-chorus-verse structure and bottles depression in a devastating contrast of musical explosions and internal collapse: “When I used to go out, I’d know everyone I saw/ Now I go out alone, if I go out at all.” – Jeff Terich

Read More: The Walkmen’s Bows + Arrows has a bitter cold streak

Listen: Spotify

Xiu Xiu – Fabulous Muscles (2004)

With considerable output over the past two-plus decades, Xiu Xiu has many releases that could easily make the list. However, their hauntingly visceral third album, Fabulous Muscles (2004), merges a surprisingly confrontational noise with some achingly delicate melodies. Jamie Stewart’s vulnerable and fearless lyricism navigates harrowing themes of trauma, struggle and identity, creating a deeply unsettling yet undeniably beautiful experience. From tracks like “I Luv the Valley OH!” and the wrenching title track, Fabulous Muscles embodies the band’s hallmark fusion of abrasive textures and emotional fragility. The album is widely regarded as a daring and cathartic masterpiece, because of the way it resonates through pain anyone can identify with and the presentation of intense sonic contrasts, undoubtedly a high point in experimental indie music. – Ernesto Aguilar

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Bloc Party – Silent Alarm (2005)

Despite writing and DJing across two centuries (!), there are surprisingly few musicians I feel like I discovered early enough to help “break” them even in some small fashion. At the end of the 20th century there was Tori Amos, and at the beginning of the 21st I got in on the ground floor with Bloc Party. The word I keep using to describe Silent Alarm to other people is “buzzsaw.” For a traditional rock album, regardless of its indie genre or youthful players, this is a fascinating headphone trip. Yes, Kele Okereke’s moody yelps and chanting are their own starmaking instruments on this LP, cutting through the clatter of “So Here We Are” for example. But it’s Okereke and Russell Lissack’s visceral guitar edge and Matt Tong’s punchy drums in songs like “Helicopter” and “Like Eating Glass”—Gang of Four misplayed on 45—that fucking torch their contemporaries.

By extension, that means props must also be given to Paul Epworth, whose production choices and methods for this album helped start his studio career pretty much in the stratosphere. With this band just finding their way, the scraping and downright physical nature of their recorded sound (hi, “Banquet”), and their nebulous lyrical takes on love and politics, Bloc Party hit the ground running as R.E.M. once did. Their later releases have nosedived through Okereke’s fascination with dance music and lineup changes beginning with Tong’s 2013 departure. Still, nobody can take Silent Alarm away from us. – Adam Blyweiss

Listen: Spotify

The Decemberists – Picaresque (2005)

The Decemberists’ third album is perhaps best known for “The Mariner’s Revenge Song,” a Moby Dick-like epic in miniature that predicted the Portland group’s turn toward prog and saw them get swallowed by a whale every night onstage. Climactic though that song might be, it’s a dramatic punctuation mark on what’s otherwise the group’s best set of pop songs, delivered in the form of dramatic chamber pop (“We Both Go Down Together”), Hammond-driven stories of personal humiliation (“The Sporting Life”), soulful and brassy social commentary (“16 Military Wives”) and the band’s most affecting statement of loneliness, “The Engine Driver.” The line between Colin Meloy’s character sketches and personal songwriting have never been as blurred as they are here (except for the whale…), making them all the more affecting as a result. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday (2005)

A band of Minnesota natives in Brooklyn write a Biblical epic about a group of drug dealers and people of questionable moral standing, centered on a protagonist named Hallelujah, “Holly” for short, set to heartland rock hooks worthy of the E Street Band. And yet somehow that doesn’t even come close to summarizing Separation Sunday, The Hold Steady’s breakthrough second album and one of the greatest rock albums of the 2000s. From the outset it nails the foundation of a great rock album, being in that it rocks. But beyond that it’s in Craig Finn’s yarns of river baptisms, numbers games and highbrow-meets-lowbrow one-liners where the real magic lies (“Later on we did some sexy things/Took a couple photographs and carved them into wood relief,” “Sweet St. Paul/That must be the hardest luck saint of them all/We met him at some suburban St. Paul mall,” “Tramps like us and we like tramps”). Rock ‘n’ roll as Homerian epic, told like a comeback story—damn right it’ll rise again. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

The National – Alligator (2005)

No band has made as fruitful a career out of capturing 21st century melancholy and malaise as The National has, fusing Tindersticks style chamber-pop baroque with Interpol-adjacent post-punk revival beneath snapshots into dimly lit apartments that reveal people at their most awkward, unglamorous or damaged. Doting fathers do obscene dances around coffee tables, memories flash of exes pissing into sinks, and frayed cries of “My mind’s not right!” somehow end up as energizing moments of glory. Alligator is the band’s most animated album, juxtaposing their hardest rocking songs with their most elegant ballads while showcasing Matt Berninger’s curious strengths as a lyricist (“Serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon” being his most surreal moment of romanticism). The greatest argument for this being the band’s best album is its closer, “Mr. November,” a desperate anthem of doomed hopes. “I won’t fuck us over, I won’t fuck us over,” Berninger yelps. It’s almost a foregone conclusion that the narrator of the song is destined for failure. It’s a bit ironic, then, that the album ends feeling like a triumph. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema (2005)

I feel like I’m always missing the boat on power-pop. Never “got” Big Star, one-and-done with Matthew Sweet, can’t really listen to The Posies anymore. So my north star with the subgenre will probably be the third album from this Vancouver indie supergroup. The force of Twin Cinema comes from all directions. Dan Bejar leads “Broken Beads,” a punchy take on non sequitur folk-rock, while Neko Case and A.C. Newman harmonize over the driving riffs of “The Bleeding Heart Show.” There are also entertaining moments when the album spins out to The Decemberists’ brand of rustic baroque, before cuts like “Use It” and “Sing Me Spanish Techno” remind us where the band’s bread is buttered. – Adam Blyweiss

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Okkervil River – Black Sheep Boy (2005)

Will Sheff is an indie-folk singer/songwriter with a penchant for unexpected moments of emotional detonation. The gap between the hushed moments on Okkervil River’s Black Sheep Boy are as vast as any record on this list, the group often showcasing the entire spectrum within a single song, as they do on the standout single “For Real,” a mesmerizing song of bloodthirsty visions and exclamatory climaxes that roars in its final cries of “You can’t hide!” It’s fitting, then, that Black Sheep Boy is as dark and confrontational an album as it is, using the brief opening cover of Tim Hardin’s “Black Sheep Boy” as a sketch from which to craft a character study that winds through coming-of-age narratives, love stories and violent revenge fantasies with no shortage of emotional catharsis to spare. A more understated version of this album might have worked well enough, but with feelings this big, sometimes you have to scream. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Sleater-Kinney – The Woods (2005)

“This part should sound like Keith Moon — and then like a blanket being lowered over Keith Moon’s kit.”

Imagine getting these notes from a producer and trying to translate them into something usable. When Sleater-Kinney chose to work with Dave Fridmann for their seventh album, The Woods, they ended up pushing themselves to their physical and emotional limits and sometimes without any feedback from the studio wizard adding the extra nudge. It’s no wonder that the Portland trio took a 10-year break after releasing the album. The Woods took a lot out of Sleater-Kinney. No album of the band’s is as loud, as intense or as draining to listen to as this booming, distorted rock epic.

By 2005, Sleater-Kinney’s sound was already well established. Corin Tucker’s fiery vocals, Carrie Brownstein’s dynamic guitar leads and Janet Weiss’ nimble drumming combined in a perfect mixture across six good-to-essential LPs. But in their last pre-hiatus recording, they took that as far as it would go, through the lung-capacity-challenging heroism of “The Fox,” the emotional climaxes of “Jumpers” and the sprawling guitar freakout of “Let’s Call It Love.” The Woods is Sleater-Kinney at their best and most unfiltered, proving themselves worth of wielding the Hammer of the Gods and giving it a good swing back at an uninspired rock ‘n’ roll landscape. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Wolf Parade – Apologies to the Queen Mary (2005)

Splitting up songwriting/vocals duties between the equally prolific Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug, Wolf Parade divide and conquer on Apologies to the Queen Mary, the jolting and off-kilter debut from Montreal’s mid-2000s indie rock darlings. The Isaac Brock-recorded release came to fruition after the Modest Mouse frontman aided in signing the Canadian quartet to Sub Pop Records. Apologies provides a cross section of prog, post punk and straight up rock’n’roll, filtered through some of the most talented artists within the thriving Montreal underground scene. Tossing in influence from the jittering art punk of Talking Heads with the fleshed out noise of the Pixies, Wolf Parade strike indie rock gold on the blooming “Modern World” and boisterous “Fancy Claps.” Each track is an integral part of an eight song leadup to the album’s triumphant and timeless “I’ll Believe In Anything.” Despite being vocally similar, both frontmen bring their finest chops and ideas to the table for Apologies, culminating in a career-defining, genre-transcending masterpiece. – Patrick Pilch

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not (2006)

Nowadays it’s tough to remember the Arctics’ original scattergun approach that led to them becoming a chart marvel. But for all their skewed attempts at being The Strokes, the novel use of MySpace as a marketing tool and resultant Whatever People Say I Am… secured an enduring legacy by adhering to the ultimate rock foundation: bands are made by picking up instruments, making a racket and banging on about a shoddy hometown. The troupe captured lightning in a bottle from the very first thunderous drum rolls of “View From the Afternoon,” making “dirty dancefloors and dreams of naughtiness” a recurring soundtrack to everyone that’s experienced crummy nightlife fails or thrills, and wishes to recapture them while underground partying and music scenes sadly face continual setbacks. – Elliot Burr

Read More: Treble 100, No. 92: Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Belle and Sebastian – The Life Pursuit (2006)

Despite the caricaturization of the band as either hopelessly twee or “sad bastard” music as dismissed by Barry in High Fidelity, Belle and Sebastian are way more fun than that. As a live group they put on a rock show as good and as joyful as anyone on this list, and The Life Pursuit was the album to finally capture that energy on record. Their return to Matador after a brief label hop and some Avalanches remixes, The Life Pursuit is gloriously upbeat and rich in sound, effortlessly leaping from bright guitar jangle (“Another Sunny Day”) to glam (“White Collar Boy”) to soulful pop (“For the Price of a Cup of Tea”). It’s the same wit and storytelling of the more insular Belle and Sebastian but magnified, amplified, and ready to rock—modestly, of course. – Jeff Terich 

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)

Liars – Drum’s Not Dead (2006)

Liars have never moved in a straight line. While it’s easy to identify a Liars song when you hear it—mostly because of Angus Andrew’s low-moaned vocals—few of them sound anything alike. Drum’s Not Dead was a bold step into their weirdest territory upon its release, following two similarly weird but stylistically different efforts in the early half of the decade. Here, they abandoned their Gang of Four ambitions and embraced a spacious art-rock/post-punk style that owed as much to Can as it did to This Heat. And while those definitely aren’t reference points that’ll lead to a hit record, they did usher in a more exploratory and surprisingly beautiful era of Liars, one where ominous noises would be pursued toward their hypnotic conclusion and three-chord ballads didn’t need climaxes or choruses. This album, like Liars’ others, doesn’t make logical sense either, but none of that matters when it’s this breakthtaking to behold. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Sonic Youth – Rather Ripped (2006)

Rather Ripped is Sonic Youth after an audit—no, really. After thieves stole equipment from the band’s van and auxiliary member Jim O’Rourke left the fold, the band’s most familiar faces (Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley) huddled and drew up a new game plan—the old game plan. Thing is, no band can re-inhabit its former self, even though movies propagate the fantasy. Here we have four masters of the art revisiting music made in their days of yore: bleating guitar solos, rough experimentation, Gordon’s single-note bass playing in unison with her or Moore’s whispers. It’s like riding a bicycle for them—and a go-to musical accompaniment when you bust out your own wheels. – Kurt Orzeck

Read More: Sonic Youth’s Walls Have Ears captures a thrilling moment in the band’s history

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain (2006)

A lot of bands from New York City rose to international fame in the ‘00s. Literal books and documentaries have been written about the entire scene. And outside of maybe LCD Soundsystem, none of them had the lasting critical or creative staying power like TV on the Radio. Return to Cookie Mountain fused noisy arthouse post-punk with electro, hip-hop, and jazz into a kinetic whole, with gritty guitar textures, rich bass tones, dank horn stabs, and snarling political lyricism. Thanks to a majestic production aesthetic, standouts like “I Was a Lover,” “Province,” “Wolf Like Me,” and “Dirty Whirl” alternately swing, groove, pulse, and bellow. A magnum opus of geological and gustatory proportions. – Adam P. Newton

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Battles – Mirrored (2007)

With their groundbreaking 2007 debut, Mirrored, Battles unleashed a hypnotically intricate blend of math-rock complexity, experimental electronics and avant-garde vocal manipulations. Such a feat is hard to achieve, yet instantly memorable. Pulsating rhythms and meticulous details define tracks like the explosively surreal “Atlas,” where mechanized beats intertwine with otherworldly vocal effects. It’s magic, artistically and technically. Praised for their technical prowess and boundary-pushing creativity, Battles crafted an exuberantly experimental landscape of noise and imagination that helped redefine rock’s possibilities. And still, Mirrored is one of those sometimes overlooked landmark of innovative artistry, captivating listeners with its relentless rhythmic inventiveness, vibrant compositions and electrifying sense of the unknown. – Ernesto Aguilar

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver (2007)

For all of the strides it showed that dance-punk had made—and could make—since its gestation in New York record stores, British clubs and LA blogs, I think James Murphy’s second proper LP with his big band actually feels like a meditation on one song. “No Fun,” penned by Iggy Pop and the rest of The Stooges for their self-titled 1969 debut album, was a simply written and jaggedly grooved anthem against boredom and loneliness. “Well, come on!” presaged so many other desperate calls and complaints: Pretty, pretty vacant. I just want to have something to do. Here we are now, entertain us.

LCD Soundsystem stretched those basic ideas out to an album-length meditation on ennui, lost direction and sought identity. In that stretching, Sound of Silver made the genre into Silly Putty. “North American Scum” lifts up the ink of geopolitics for big-ticket pop. “Someone Great” reshapes this music into leftfield artistry, making beautiful yet barely-danceable Big Statements from the school of 1990s intelligent techno. “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” pulls it in a then-new direction of disaffected balladry.

If these three songs alone stood out from your everyday mindless electronic stomp you’d likely still have a mold-breaking, form-redefining LP on your hands. But this is LCD we’re talking about here, able to deliver the Nancy Whang-led wiggle of “Get Innocuous” and Murphy’s frustrated wit in “All My Friends.” Delivered with a disco heart and a poet’s mind, Sound of Silver restates this band’s position as one of the most literate and exciting of the start of the 21st century. I expect that vintage will continue to age well as 2099 draws ever closer. – Adam Blyweiss

Read More: Treble 100, No. 52: LCD Soundystem – Sound of Silver

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Jens Lekman – Night Falls Over Kortedala (2007)

Sweden’s Jens Lekman attaches traditional pop and samples to linear, detail-oriented songwriting, which makes him a charm magnet right out of the box. Night Falls Over Kortedala went all the way with that ethic, with orchestral sweeps, Love Boat disco, doo-wop R&B and more styles pouring out in full flower and melodrama. But rather than distract, they draw out the wit and earned emotion of Lekman’s stories, especially the straight-ally comedy “A Postcard to Nina,” the intimate haircut paean “Shirin,” and the apparently true account of his brief stint as a bingo caller, “Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo.” – Paul Pearson

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

The National – Boxer (2007)

Whatever connection The National once had to any perceived “post-punk revival” now seems tangential at best. The band’s 2007 single “Mistaken For Strangers” carries the darkness of Joy Division and the razor-sharp riffs of a band like The Chameleons, but at the center of that rare moment of punk volume is the core of The National’s ethos: “Another unelegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults.” The National, by mere technicality, is an indie rock band, but they’re more interested in brooding and letting a moment linger. They slowly allow the narratives on Boxer to unfold via string-laden arrangements and gentle trickles of piano provided, in at least a couple instances, by Sufjan Stevens. To call it “indie rock for grown-ups” would be a bit condescending, but maybe more accurately it’s indie rock that breathes. Of the band’s nearly two decades’ worth of material, these songs are their prettiest, in no small part because they’re given the proper space to reveal themselves. – Jeff Terich

Read More: Treble 100, No. 57: The National – Boxer

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Panda Bear – Person Pitch (2007)

Noah Lennox plays well with others, whether as a longtime member of style-shifting sonic alchemists Animal Collective or in his recent series of albums made with Sonic Boom. But left to his own devices, Panda Bear has delivered works of uniquely hypnotic profundities all his own. Person Pitch revealed the breadth and depth of his abilities as a solo artist via deceptively simple means, most of its compositions built from relatively unfussy loop sequences and gorgeous vocal overdubs, a masterpiece akin to Pet Sounds made with an SP-303. But within the sublime, mesmeric qualities of its songs are moments of zen-like wisdom. “I try to remember always, always to have a good time,” Lennox sings in opener “Comfy in Nautica.” Start here, and the good times will follow. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Deerhunter – Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. (2008)

Double LPs—specifically sets released as two albums in one—are especially hard to come by nowadays, and finding one as consistent as Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. is an entirely different ordeal. Both albums would leak after a Mediafire link mishap on the band’s blog, exposing unmastered Weird Era demos, as well as Bradford Cox’s second studio LP as Atlas Sound. Fluctuating between a variety of genres and influence, Deerhunter’s third proper full length blends elements of shoegaze, freak folk and garage rock into two cohesive, standalone LPs. Each album represents potential artistic direction, with the former dropping Cryptograms’ heavy effects usage, and the latter offering a sonically natural progression to its predecessor. As Marc Hogan points out in a first take review for Cryptograms, Deerhunter are essentially a pop band. Highlights like “Vox Celeste,” “Never Stops” and “Nothing Ever Happens” prove that beneath Deerhunter’s thick layers of psychedelic distortion and hypnagogic effects lie spiraling bass hooks driving thoughtful pop moments. – Patrick Pilch

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

M83 – Saturdays=Youth (2008)

M83’s Anthony Gonzalez cited Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness as a major influence on M83’s hitmaking 2011 double album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. But that’s not where the Pumpkin parallels end—in both cases, it’s actually the previous album that’s the superior release. In fact, Saturdays=Youth is only 10 minutes shorter than its successor, an ambitious and romantic gaze back at ‘80s-inspired aesthetics, right down to the Molly Ringwald lookalike on its cover art. But Saturdays=Youth is more importantly the moment where Gonzalez made the transition from breathtaking songscapist to pop songwriting dynamo, still capable of synth-driven hypnosis via songs like “Couleurs” while offering Kate Bush-style art-pop catharsis in the form of “Skin of the Night” and seeking new wave glory with “Kim and Jessie” and “Graveyard Girl.” It’s ironic, in a sense, that this is M83’s most grounded release—even if it never feels like it’ll ever come down from its heights. – Jeff Terich

Read More: Treble 100, No. 67: M83 – Saturdays=Youth

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (2008)

Fleet Foxes’ self-titled debut album might be the most bucolic basement record ever recorded. From the old-school imagination of Seattle wunderkind Robin Pecknold, to Pecknold’s parents’ basement, to the studio with Phil Ek, these songs took shape over many rounds of tinkering. But listening to them feels like inner peace in a pinch. Fleet Foxes is a collection of gentle devotionals, a choral aural hall of mirrors, and a folk rock record that doesn’t sound tied to any particular era. In my mind, with its snapshots of stolid nature and rich vocal harmonies like pockets of warm air, it’s an album built for winter. But it serves for whenever the mundane needs a little extra grandeur. – Casey Burke

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight (2008)

“The Midnight Organ Fight” could be an unflattering reference to sex, pumping far too much alcohol through a struggling liver, or maybe even a literal punch to the stomach. Frightened Rabbit’s sophomore album The Midnight Organ Fight is, mostly, about breaking hearts, and the upgrade in production from their 2006 debut Sing the Greys allowed those wounds, bruises and aches a newly brilliant clarity. Yet the Scottish group retains a kind of rustic and rusted sensibility that’s endlessly charming and ramshackle in spite of the upgrade, underscoring the vulnerability in Scott Hutchison’s voice on standouts like the soaring opener “The Modern Leper” and the belligerent and melancholy “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms.” Yet it’s not all desperation and hurt—on songs like the piano pounder “The Twist” and bluegrass-tinted “Old, Old Fashioned,” the group stumble into something more playful and light-hearted. It’s those moments of levity that make the album less of a difficult listen in the aftermath of Hutchison’s untimely death in 2018, a reminder that Frightened Rabbit’s music—even at its most brokenhearted—could be an absolute blast. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

MGMT – Oracular Spectacular (2008)

MGMT’s debut album Oracular Spectacular has played like a sort of soundtrack to the ‘00s—while MGMT is far from a one-hit wonder band, tracks such as the singles “Electric Feel” and “Time to Pretend” have continued to be sampled and played over and over since their release. Spectacular reads like a call to arms for young people—with Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser as the ringleaders, pushing their listeners to rise up and embrace their youth to the fullest. It stands as a triumphant debut, brimming with honesty and songs made for dancing. – Virginia Croft

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

No Age – Nouns (2008)

One of the most successful bands to emerge from the scene at L.A.’s D.I.Y. venue The Smell, No Age filtered two- and three-chord pop songs through heavy layers of distortion and raw, scrappy, punk rock abrasion. Their Sub Pop debut Nouns at times sounds like the best mid-’80s SST Records releases played simultaneously—the gauzy haze of Sonic Youth, the muscular punk of Hüsker Dü, even the lo-fi psychedelia of The Meat Puppets. Randy Randall and Dean Spunt make an immaculate noise throughout Nouns, sometimes literally, and sometimes in the form of a perfect pop song, such as the driving anthem “Sleeper Hold.” They make a lot of sound for two guys, but they also don’t go out of their way to try to disguise the fact that Nouns was, in fact, made by two guys, playing loud and fast and seemingly having a lot of fun doing so. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

TV on the Radio – Dear Science (2008)

After their major label debut Return to Cookie Mountain, post-modern rock savants, TV on the Radio followed it up with Dear Science, an open letter to the technical gospel that was beginning to feel like dogma. Light work, right? Surprisingly, yes. As in spite of its density and intricate layers—its gravity, somberness and weight, Dear Science is still catchy. The lyrics are full of metaphor, imagery and emotion—that’s to say, there’s a lot to them. But even so, the material is easy to digest. While melodies stick, instrumentation lingers, with a sort of sweet sadness, an emotional plea—please, dear data drones, allow us our feelings. – J. Smith

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)

Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend (2008)

Well read, oxford clad and primped for their late night TV debut, Columbia University’s finest baroque-pop quartet showed a knack for weaving bookbound lyricism into Paul Simon-esque melodies on their self-titled debut. Self-described by frontman Ezra Koenig as “Upper West Side Soweto,” Vampire Weekend’s music plays out like a modernized S.E. Rogie fixed on the socialites dwelling in the WASP-swamped hotspots of New England and prime real estate of Manhattan. Koenig’s intellectualized songwriting covers aging gadabouts, society’s colonialist undertones, and a grammar-defending Facebook group, with multiple nods toward Romantic Age poet William Blake.

“Oh your collegiate grief has left you dowdy in sweatshirts/Absolute horror,” Koenig sings on “One (Blake’s Got a New Face),” a cross examination of introspection and confidence, equipped with a sharp Metallica reference, despite sharing zero similarities with its source. On “Bryn,” the narrator reflects fondly on a romantic connection to a real life persona, reminding them “Ion displacement won’t work in the basement/especially when I’m not with you.” Koenig’s bold and brainy lines is an example of the kind of songwriting where every word counts. A bona-fide appreciation for African guitar music mixed with Rostam Batmanglij’s fine-tuned production makes Vampire Weekend’s debut a landmark in indie pop. – Patrick Pilch

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)

It’s hard to fully convey how much of a Big Deal Merriweather Post Pavilion was if you weren’t there, but only one week into 2009, Animal Collective’s electronic psych opus was being proclaimed as album of the year (even here–and we were ultimately proven correct). Shedding the freak-folk primalism of Avey Tare and Panda Bear’s early recordings and building outward from the hazy oddball pop of Feels and Strawberry Jam, the Baltimore group delivered their defining work. Never before or since has their music seemed so joyous and bright, stacked wall to wall with heroic anthems that just a half-decade earlier would have seemed far more likely to come from anyone else but Animal Collective. Whether it’s through the Frankie Knuckles nod of arpeggiated banger “My Girls” or the good-vibes pop pulse of “Summertime Clothes,” Merriweather Post Pavilion is a showcase for Animal Collective at their most vibrant and untouchable. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

The Antlers – Hospice (2009)

Very few sad records really live up to the hype. This is one of them. Typically, it takes something like Pink Moon or Grace, albums stained by the tragedy that they prefigure. Here, it is entirely in the execution, the writing, the verve. I am one of many, many who have been devastated by this record, which chronicles so aptly the febrile quietude of deep pain, the dramaless fragility of the body near suicide, the body near death. You can feel your psyche spilling out of your head like oil down a drain or clouds driven by gentle wind. It barely feels like music, almost more like opening a small door on your chest, viewing this repeating cyclical story we all seem to carry shrapnel from. It makes me want to lay down and die, find rest, quiet my head, just as strongly now as when I first heard it well over a decade ago. – Langdon Hickman

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Bat for Lashes – Two Suns (2009)

Though Natasha Khan would reach higher conceptual heights on later albums, it’s unclear if she’ll ever match the immediacy of Two Suns. The dark, artful pop of her breakthrough record as Bat for Lashes earned immediate comparisons to Kate Bush. But Khan had less (well, somewhat less) overt theatricality and more direct engagement with the current of pop music. Hence we get earworms like “Daniel” and “Pearl’s Dream” alongside darker meditations like the pummeling “Glass” and the baroquely mournful “The Big Sleep” (a duet with Scott Walker; yes, that one). Two Suns is a work of gothic excellence that seems to have been partially forgotten; it’s well-deserving of reappraisal. – L.D. Flowers

Read More: Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns built a fantasy world of its own time and space

Listen: Spotify

Dinosaur Jr – Farm (2009)

With their comeback record Beyond, J Mascis and company proved they still had what it takes to live up to their own esteem. With Farm, they proved they were better than they’d ever been, finally topping their otherwise undefeated second record You’re Living All Over Me. It helped that in the intervening years, the members had explored their impulses from country to doom metal to hard rock to folk, had gotten bitter and patched things up, and had rediscovered what made their superlative early material click as well as it had. As a result, Farm is everything they were at their best and more; the rock is heavier, the solos noisier and more virtuosic, the rhythms groovier, the songs catchier. It proved they were young guns who had a good record once but brilliant writers and players who could cut sessions till the end of their days. – Langdon Hickman

Listen: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest (2009)

I like to think of Grizzly Bear as the bridge between millennial-core as found on playlists like “Indie Sleaze Bangers” and the truly weird avant-pop that those bands thought they were reviving in the 2000s. And Grizzly Bear does indeed do both. Genuine sleaze banger alt-radio hit “Two Weeks” stands out on the album, rather pluckily, nestled in between two tracks of dreamy, inscrutable, and elaborately arranged art-rock. That’s just the first three songs. This album unfolds unhurriedly, drawing out unexpectedly complex song structures alongside fits and bursts of catchy hooks. The combination feels like a bygone era, when we thought we had the time and space to stretch out and experiment. – Flora James

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

The Horrors – Primary Colours (2009)

Every album by London’s The Horrors is a wholly different creation. They’ve cycled through goth punk, shoegaze, synth-pop and industrial, with 2009’s Primary Colours being the album in the discography that feels like their most singularly impressive. The brand of shoegaze that the quintet come up with here is defined by confidence, élan and dense, impressive textures. Landing just two years after their fun but silly Cramps-and-cobwebs debut Strange House, Primary Colours is an incredibly mature level-up that retains the energy of their debut (“Three Decades” is like My Bloody Valentine having a panic attack) whilst boasting endless depths of engrossing songwriting flair (see the spectacular krautrock closer “Sea Within A Sea”). Not only one of the greatest leaps forward by any indie rock band, Primary Colours deserves to be acclaimed as an all-time great shoegaze album as well. – Tom Morgan

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Passion Pit – Manners (2009)

Possessed by a hyperactive sense of melody, groove and heart, and led by Michael Angelakos’ inhumanly high falsetto, Manners is an unbelievably dreamy and spastic album whose accessibility and immediacy is still stunning more than a decade later. The production is peerless, but It’s the cryptic, near-bottomless depth of the lyrics that represent Manners‘ mark upon the indie landscape. “Moth’s Wings” and “Little Secrets” have some seriously profound and morbid contemplations behind an aural cloak of near perfect indie synth-pop. – Brian Roesler

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

The xx – xx (2009)

Not all debut albums are created equal, but there’s a reason why they often garner such outsized attention in the minds of fans and critics alike. London trio The xx hit the indie zeitgeist at the absolute right time, and within a year of xx dropping in 2009, it felt like you could hear their minimalist electro-pop in everything. Yet, that apparent ubiquity on commercials, mixtapes, television programs and more spoke to the profound earworm power of tracks like “VCR,” “Basic Space,” “Crystalized,” and more. Thus, while dorky fans like me believe that 2017’s I See You is technically better in terms of technique, production, and songwriting, it doesn’t hold the same place in our hearts as the debut. Romy’s inky guitar phrases, Oliver delicate counterpoint bass, and Jamie’s sparse beats truly captured lightning in a bottle. – Adam P. Newton

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Beach Fossils – Beach Fossils (2010)

At chillwave’s peak, indie rock hit the beach. Some seaside bands crashed out while others kicked back, basking in the ostensible simplicity of the early Obama years. Captured Tracks signees Beach Fossils can be credited with influencing a wave of lo-fi dream pop through their deliriously catchy, unflinchingly straightforward upbeat numbers that channelled Real Estate and The Clientele alike. The Brooklyn band’s self-titled debut can be taken at face-value, and it’s refreshingly uncomplicated in retrospect, as clear as a day lit up by a bright blue sky. The Sun, the trees, the grass, the sand–Beach Fossils’ baked-in nostalgia floats by like a pleasant all-day reverie. – Patrick Pilch

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Beach House – Teen Dream (2010)

Intimate, emotive, and for the first time grand, Beach House’s stunning Sub Pop debut dilated the band’s scope without sacrificing their tried-and-true sound. With a fleshed out percussion section and an invigorating vocal performance by Victoria Legrand, Teen Dream dismissed any former notion that Beach House was a mere bedroom pop project. But as their sound widened, their MO remained the same. Teen Dream’s variance and sequencing is exceptional, carrying the spirit of its predecessors into a new era for one of the best bands of the 21st century. – Patrick Pilch

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest (2010)

Deerhunter’s fifth album remains their most accessible and most acclaimed for good reason. Halcyon Digest works equally well as an introduction to the band and a sophisticated leap forward from an already well-established sound. It comes at you like a half-remembered dream, its pop moments beamed out from some uncanny valley, even its slowest songs brimming with unspent wanderlust. Every song starts in one place and transporting us somewhere new: the hypnagogic breakdown in “Desire Lines,” the aural photonegative “Sailing,” “Helicopter”’s watery melodic buildup, a hushed realization about aging in the “Basement Scene,” the sparkling “He Would Have Laughed” that ends the album by cutting out without warning. Until that moment, uncertainty and awe color everything. – Casey Burke

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Foals – Total Life Forever (2010)

The progression undergone by Oxford’s Foals on their second album, Total Life Forever, isn’t the most dramatic, especially when you consider that of other bands from their neck of the woods, but it’s one of the still-young century’s most rewarding. Paring back some of the hyperactive dancepunk exercises and twitchy math-rock arrangements in favor of a more spacious kind of art-pop, while allowing for a stronger vocal presence from Yannis Phillippakis, Foals allowed more space and dimension into their sound. While standouts such as “Miami” offered a swagger and strut, it’s on the longer, more slow-burning moments like “Spanish Sahara” and “Black Gold” where the band’s exercises in patience paid off handsomely. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Titus Andronicus – The Monitor (2010)

The Monitor doesn’t concern itself with its appearance. How could it be when there are bagpipes, The Dark Knight references, and eight-minute odysseys all under the veil of a Civil War concept album that, ultimately, is drunken Springteen punk? But that’s its charm. It’s hard to untangle because it’s the type of album, like many great indie rock records, that will change your life given the right place and right time. In hindsight, it’s clearly a lighting-in-a-bottle moment when bandleader Patrick Stickles’ ambition and songwriting melded. Fortunately, it remains as vital as it was on release. Its adolescent battle cries have aged into lifelong affirmations that it’s okay to be a loser. – Colin Dempsey

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Women – Public Strain (2010)

Women’s dissolution in 2012 brought about two very different acts, Preoccupations and Cindy Lee, and their triumphs can be traced back to Public Strain. Call it Velvet Undergound post-punk if you like, but laid in it were the traces of Cindy Lee’s hypnagogia and the coldness that marked early Preoccupations. On Public Strain, Women’s second, last, and best album, vocalist Patrick Flegel paints the populated world as lonely since they wrote most of it during a time when they worked graveyard shifts in suburbs, where there was evidence of life but not of human interactions. Yes, there’s life on Public Strain, but it is distant. It is music from the other side of the mirror, having to look past one’s reflection and hope there is humanity on the other side. – Colin Dempsey

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Bon Iver – Bon Iver (2011)

If For Emma, Forever Ago captured Justin Vernon’s origins as the “cold nights in Wisconsin” songwriter, the next effort felt like opening the cabin’s door to a glorious expanse. The collaborative band input gave extra meat to the intimacy he already had down to delicious detail; the glistening crescendos of “Perth” still reverberate as strongly a quarter of a century later. And his croon, situated as an acoustic instrument before its more manipulated use later, still courses through the blood of current musicians. It’s an emotionally charged call worlds away from hip hop’s traditional disco and funk samples, but soon used as emphatically in the genre, that helped fuel the future decade’s sounds with hushed aplomb. – Elliot Burr

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Destroyer – Kaputt (2011)

It’s only when you place Kaputt next to the other greatest indie rock records that you realize how strange its place in the canon is. It’s sophisti-pop, which is not to split hairs but to illustrate that it draws from a different lineage. But, like all great retrospectives, Kaputt mines all that’s good while discarding what deserves to be forgotten, with the key difference being that, rather than a suave frontman, we get dirtbag Dan Bejar, who shows that sophisti-pop succeeds when it doesn’t try at all. His vocals are emblematic of Kaputt as a whole, off-the-cuff and loose, yet intoxicating. This is likely because its drama is subtle. Bejar sweats, but you never hear it, even on the 11-minute existential “Bay of Pigs (Detail)”. The Strokes wished they were as cool as Bejar is here. – Colin Dempsey

Read More: A Beginner’s Guide to Destroyer

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues (2011)

On paper, Fleet Foxes could easily fall into the wave of popular campfire-style, rustic indie-folk bands that clogged the airwaves in the early 2010s. There were countless group harmonies, layers upon layers of acoustic guitars, a plethora of foot-stomping, tambourine-shaking percussion parts, and a good deal of romanticized, earnestly-delivered rusticisms, courtesy of frontman Robin Pecknold. But Helplessness Blues swerves that easy categorisation, avoiding the cliches and hollow appeals to folk “authenticity” that followed other groups. This was so instrumentally and sonically rich, so ambitious in its construction and arrangement, it only proved the distance from their indie-folk contemporaries. Moments like the squawking free-jazz freakout that closes out “The Shrine / An Argument” showed a band with a much broader scope. The deeply organic, expansive production elevated the expected folk-rock staples into something of enormous natural force, all of that scale accentuating the deep yearning of Pecknold’s writing. At its best Helplessness Blues is indie-folk at its most enriching and life-affirming. – Noah Sparkes

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost (2011)

If any songwriter can be described as “open-hearted,” it’s Christopher Owens. In a way, each of the two great studio LPs from his too-short-lived band Girls interprets that open-heartedness very differently. The second, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, goes for the sound of a capital-R ‘70s Rock record: gospel choirs, ever-present organ, guitar workouts dripping with arena rock pomp and circumstance. 

Although it’s a much bigger moonshot than the comparatively lo-fi, surfy Album, it shares its predecessor’s almost devotional commitment to simplicity. Never interested in being arch or ironic, Father, Son, Holy Ghost deals in plain sentiments all the more effective for the vacuum they leave us to fill in our own specifics. And when you hear how the lyrics melt into the half-dirty, half-sunshine guitar, and how those guitar parts mingle with Chet “JR” White’s melodic bass and the soaring gospel lines holding everything together, it hardly matters that the Beatles and Pink Floyd did this stuff first. In light of White’s tragic passing in 2020, there will never be another Girls album. But Father, Son, Holy Ghost dreams big with an ear glued to rock history, and sticks the landing in every way. – Casey Burke

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Real Estate – Days (2011)

“I was just floating on an inner tube in the sun / In the sun,” we hear in the first song on Days. Just like that, we’re situated. Multilayered without much complexity, languid without sinking into sadness, Real Estate’s second LP is the peak of low-stakes suburban indie. The alchemy these Ridgewood, New Jersey postgrads manage with a basic toolkit is incredible. On every song, Martin Courtney’s gentle contemplations, a patchwork of guitar-bass chimes and the odd keyboard wash add up to a stunning melody that clings like a carefree memory. Real Estate got darker with the follow-up Atlas, and they’ve gotten more complicated since. They’ve never equaled Days’ summer distillation. – Casey Burke

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

St. Vincent – Strange Mercy (2011)

It’s an odd privilege to write about my favorite St. Vincent album. Elsewhere Strange Mercy is a mere third album, an entry on a list as we rush to note the massive acclaim that Annie Clark rightly garnered around her self-titled 2014 album, and after. It may be a crucial stepping stone on a meteoric career, but it’s also an essential distillation of what makes Clark such a captivating musician. The bombastic combination of intimate yet puzzling lyricism with virtuosic guitar hooks is undeniable. There’s also the catchy, often booming electronic production that undergirds many of the biggest moments on the album, but in much more raw and natural ways than the polished production of her later work. As a snapshot, this is some of Clark’s best rock music at the ambitious edge of rock itself. – Flora James

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Yuck – Yuck (2011)

An auspicious debut turned stone-cold classic, Yuck’s self-titled 2011 LP is a landmark in dynamic indie rock records. Led by recent Grammy winner Daniel Blumberg, the London quartet runs the gamut in 80s/90s alt-rock influence, channeling shoegaze and noise through college rock’s radio-ready melodicism. Yuck’s inspiration is clear, but is far from derivative, containing some of the best pop songwriting of the 2010s. All-timers like “Get Away” and “Georgia” juxtapose understated classics like “Sunday” and “Stutter,” but the band burns it all down with “Rubber,” making for a remarkably cohesive album from start to finish. – Patrick Pilch

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Cloud Nothings – Attack on Memory (2012)

You can’t be into 21st-century indie rock and not be a Cloud Nothings fan. The intensely-likable trio rarely make the same album twice, which all oscillate along a varied spectrum between aggressive and friendly. Attack On Memory is their first pivot toward a more abrasive sound, which the band signified from the outset by recording it with the late legend Steve Albini. While there’s the eight-minute long, Sonic Youth-esque “Wasted Days” and some dissonant noise rock sections in “Separation,” Attack On Memory is nonetheless rife with pop melody and fizzing, bouncy indie energy. “Fall In” opens with some great vocal harmonies, while “Stay Useless” is a Wipers-meets-Cheap Trick indie anthem full of angsty lyrics. A raw, vibrant and just-plain-fun album of youthful guitar rock that feels properly timeless. – Tom Morgan

Read More: Cloud Nothings forge their own path

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Hop Along – Get Disowned (2012)

Get Disowned is borne from early Modest Mouse’s angularity and Cursive’s flirtations with emo, using them to emphasize indie rock’s quirks. It begins as oversaturation, with guitars that strike like punches and Frances Quinlan’s off-putting vocals. As Get Disowned unfurls, its bluntness transforms into grace. It uses hoarseness as an agent of intimacy, protecting its secrets only to reveal that yes, they are that rough. Later, Hop Along would break down this barrier with melody, leaving Get Disowned without parallel. Indie rock has long been confessional, but it’s never been this prickly, nor has arguably soared as high as Hop Along do on “Tibetan Pop Stars,” a once-in-a-generation song. – Colin Dempsey

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Japandroids – Celebration Rock (2012)

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect title for this album. In two words, we get a whole primer on the attitude of Japandroids’ second LP: rock is a vehicle for emotion. Take that seriously. With utter abandon guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse pummel and chant their way through eight combustible, unpretentious songs that can only be described in the grandest terms: youth, recklessness, love, nostalgia. Layered on top of the fuzzed-out zeal are melodies that save the project from sounding one-note, especially in the hit single “The House That Heaven Built.” In Japandroids’ world, there’s no such thing as a small feeling. There are stakes even in sitting around drinking with your friends. We can choose to celebrate. Let’s. – Casey Burke

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

METZ – METZ (2012)

The debut album from Toronto noise rock trio Metz is an excellent example of the sum being greater than the parts. If you told someone about a new band on Sub Pop that nodded to Bleach-era Nirvana, that might not be incentive enough to rush out to hear them. However, Metz added a contemporary energy to their well-trodden antecedents’ sound that made their music fresh and vital. The band brought verve and enthusiasm to their performances in “Headache,” “Get Off,” “Wet Blanket” and “Wasted.” Later albums added more color and shade to their sound, but Metz remains the strongest document of the band’s early energy. – Greg Hyde

Read More: Metz tap into a new energy

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

My Bloody Valentine – m b v (2013)

True, My Bloody Valentine transcends “indie,” “shoegaze,” even rock itself, and the legendary group proved in 2013 that you don’t have to be Radiohead to turn a self-released album into an event. The group’s first new album in more than two decades arrived sans label, on their own terms—and the demand for it ended up crashing the band’s website that very week. Which might have been the story itself had m b v not been as revelatory as it was. Still characteristically My Bloody Valentine but weird enough to feel appropriately enough like a two-decades-later refresh, m b v paired Kevin Shields’ signature “glide” guitar and Bilinda Butcher’s hazy vocals with a psychedelic experimentalism that all came to a cacophonous climax on “Wonder 2.”  Ever the creators of blissfully otherworldly sonic landscapes, My Bloody Valentine returned with an entirely new path to explore. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Bill Callahan – Dream River (2013)

Bill Callahan contains multitudes. His warm, authoritative baritone has a way of smoothing out the incongruities between the man petty enough to make horny requests for his own funeral and the one who wants to be held like a little baby—becoming one with his narrators, and vice versa. On Dream River, it’s easy enough to imagine Callahan as any of the figures on his fourth and arguably best post-Smog album: the man who speaks only to order another round, the one who feasts on pilgrim guts, or the painter of boats whose own mysterious background becomes a blank canvas for locals to project their prejudices. As arrangements both stormy and serene tumble around him, Callahan doesn’t just inhabit these characters, he gives them dimension and color, even when his only words are “beer” and “thank you.” – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Savages – Silence Yourself (2013)

Few bands of the last 25-plus years took themselves as seriously as Savages. The Franco-English post-punk quartet wore all black all the time and practiced a confrontational feminism that seems, sadly,  all but absent from today’s indie rock. They also fucking ripped, and Silence Yourself preserves their all-too-brief peak perfectly. Gemma Thompson’s serrated-blade guitar and on-a-dime rhythmic tautness from bassist Asye Hassan and drummer Fay Milton drive the assaultive songs they were best known for (“Shut Up,” “I Am Here,” “Husbands,” “She Will”). But Savages was just as comfortable slowing to a crawl on the gleeful revenge scenario of “Marshal Dear.” Jehnny Beth is an arresting presence in all her work, now as then, but there’s a special alchemy to Savages that can’t be replicated. – L.D. Flowers

Listen: Spotify

Kurt Vile – Wakin on a Pretty Daze (2013)

On the opening title track of Wakin on a Pretty Daze, Kurt Vile creates a tonal palette that explodes into highs and lows, a sunrise of colors blooming from his energizing songwriting style. Things always feel a bit lighter when you’re in the company of Kurt Vile’s music, and on his fifth album, he expands on his polished slacker rock style. There’s a heightened technicality to tracks like “Girl Called Alex” and the kaleidoscopic “Pure Pain” but they remain grounded in his laid-back, go-with-the-flow style. Vile’s easygoing nature leads to a sense of freedom within his songs, and it’s hard to not heart how much fun he’s having on a track like “KV Crimes.” – Virginia Croft

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Alex G – DSU (2014)

While Trick had the hits, DSU had the heart and soul. Alex G’s breakthrough 2014 LP remains a pivotal eureka moment in the generational songwriter’s career and a calling card for his hauntingly opaque discography. DSU, which stands for Dream State University, nods off between sampled screams, laconic lyricism, and an electronic palette of stock keyboard tones that prod at the Zillenial subconscious. It’s a coming of age record that marked a distinct turn in Giannascoli’s already massive catalog, a transitional record from prolific GarageBand wunderkind to genre-pushing, indie rock mogul. – Patrick Pilch

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire For No Witness (2014)

In one of the standout moments on Angel Olsen’s sophomore album, she quietly asks, “Are you lonely too?” Only to turn that around with a brash and dramatic “High five! So am I!” Though it’s not a breakup album per se, in a sense, every song on Burn Your Fire For No Witness is about being alone. In alternately whisper-hushed and uproariously raucous arrangements, invoking both Leonard Cohen and Roy Orbison while dialing up the fuzz for good measure, Olsen offers anthems for the broken-hearted and the ready-to-mend, somehow while never actually abandoning her romantic outlook. On the quietly stunning centerpiece, “White Fire,” Olsen invokes the album’s title in a moment of wisdom and clarity—that only you can keep your own flame burning. But as the album comes to a close, Olsen sings softly to a struggling friend on “Windows,” asking “What’s so wrong with the light?” We all get lonely—sometimes all we need is an outstretched hand. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Parquet Courts – Sunbathing Animal (2014)

If Parquet Courts’ debut Light Up Gold was the sucker punch, Sunbathing Animal is a stretching of the legs. It takes the best elements from the motormouthed rockers’ debut and decompresses them. Not that frontman Andrew Savage has relaxed much—if anything, he philosophizes more frantically this time around. But the music gives his musings some breathing room, so we get the slower “She’s Rollin,” “Raw Milk,” and most notably the career highlight “Instant Disassembly.” Still, the balls-to-the-wall punk energy hasn’t gone away; the title track and “Black & White” are fiercer and more immediate than anything on Light Up Gold. They’d have more daring experiments to come with Human Performance and Wide Awake!. But Sunbathing Animal was where Parquet Courts first cracked their sound open. – Casey Burke

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Ty Segall – Manipulator (2014)

In the first half of the 2010s, Ty Segall released seven albums, all of them featuring varying flavors of blazing guitar rock on the spectrum of scrappy garage to thunderous heavy metal. The best of these, 2014’s Manipulator, comprised nearly the entirety of that continuum, rarely if ever dipping below maximum fuzz but elevating the California singer/songwriter’s penchant for infectious songwriting above all. Turning up the brightness from 2012’s glam-heavy Twins while retaining the bombast from that same year’s Slaughterhouse, Manipulator asks and answers the all-important question: What if Bowie and Bolan were just really, really fucking loud? And he does so with effortless aplomb, solidifying his status as not just one of the most reliable resources of rock riffs in the 21st century, but one of its best songwriters to boot. – Jeff Terich 

Read More: A Beginner’s Guide to Ty Segall

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

The Twilight Sad – Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave (2014)

It was around the 2014 release of this album that the  Scottish band earned themselves the coveted spot of being The Cure’s long-term opening band. The powerful approach to emotional songwriting displayed here makes it easy to hear why Robert Smith took such a shine to them, though the sound is a bit more like The Smiths than the Cure, with the melancholic croon of their lead singer, James Graham, pouring every ounce of his inner dramatics into these anthems of melancholy. In this album, the band found a balance of shoegazing guitar with punchy post-punk dynamics that all work in perfect unison. – Wil Lewellyn

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Sharon Van Etten – Are We There (2014)

Based on the circumstances of how it was recorded, Sharon Van Etten’s debut album Because I Was in Love is, perhaps by default, her most intimate release. But even when surrounded by bigger arrangements marked by a full-band sound, flourishes of piano and woodwind and dramatic crescendos, Are We There still cuts the deepest. She lifts the veil of glamour to reveal something real and vulnerable on “Every Time the Sun Comes Up,” and she unleashes a wounded honesty amid the climactic swells of “Your Love is Killing Me”: “You like it when I let you walk over me.” Yet there’s dreamy romanticism enough for “Tarifa” to be one of the showcase performances amid the likes of both Julee Cruise and Nine Inch Nails on Twin Peaks: The Return. Somehow, even in the haze of the Bang Bang Bar, Van Etten spins up a soulful tour-de-force that leaves an indelible impression. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream (2014)

It’s difficult to write music in the 21st century that is so heavily indebted to the stadium-scale heartland rock of the ’70s and ’80s without being immediately met with cries of “dad rock.” But the sense of space and textural brilliance of The War on Drugs’ previous work remain here, pushing their classic, vintage sound into something cosmic and psychedelic. Crucially, vocalist Adam Granduciel’s psychedelia emerges not from a blissed-out stoner’s haze, but from something more wounded and weathered; an artist disappearing into endless waves of reverb and echo. As a result, Lost in the Dream is a record that feels uniquely warm and comforting in its sorrow; a sound you’re glad to lose yourself in. – Noah Sparkes

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit (2015)

Here in the U.S. it’s easy to assume that Courtney Barnett came out of nowhere with such a confident and distinctive debut. Only true indie-heads were tuned in to the early years of Barnett and Jen Cloher’s own Milk! Records that would go on to distribute Sleater-Kinney and Chastity Belt in Australia, not to mention Barnett’s actual guitar work in bands on and off that imprint. Regardless, there is a bit of prodigy-miracle energy to Barnett’s witty lyrics and deadpan vocals, delivered in a sort of stream of consciousness that mixes just the right amount of surreal and diaristic to perfectly capture a modern joyful malaise. – Flora James

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear (2015)

Albums about love are a dime a dozen but those that manage to shed a new light on a universal experience, let alone those capable of making you feel something, are the rarest of them all. Josh Tillman’s second album following his successful 2012 rebranding as Father John Misty, is a more-than-warts-and-all examination of the vulnerabilities, insecurities, agony and ecstasy of surrendering yourself to another. It’s a rocky path getting there, unglamorous and indignified, occasionally peppered with one-night stands with women he (“literally”) can’t stand, set to songwriting more stylistically aligned with Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman than most of his Sub Pop labelmates—speckled with flourishes of synth, mariachi horns and string sections. “Maybe love is just an economy based on resource scarcity,” Tillman muses in “Holy Shit,” arriving upon the realization that maybe even someone reckless and self-destructive deserves it too, and those lucky enough to find it would do well to hold onto it. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Joanna Newsom – Divers (2015)

On her fourth album, Divers, harpist and singer/songwriter Joanna Newsom pens gorgeous stories using her quirky and delicate narrative style. Songs are filtered through agrarian, maritime, or ornithological themes which wind through imaginative piano melodies, while fragments of gentle flute and Newsom’s impressive fingerwork on the harp serve as top notes. Throughout her captivating stories about life and love, Divers explores the vast differences between the dark, light, and sadness of human life: a grieved woman waiting on the shore for someone who isn’t coming back; an old man in a raincoat, an unlucky woman whose final moments include soaring over the land, the sea and humble homes along the shore.. And Newsom can just as easily spin a playful pop single like “Sapokanikan.” Throughout these mystical journeys, Newsom loses none of her childlike qualities—she only gains more wisdom. – Emily Reily

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Sufjan Stevens – Carrie and Lowell (2015)

That’s right. We swapped out Illinois. I will happily rhapsodize with you over why Sufjan’s 2005 album is important, but it’s also not as good as Carrie & Lowell. Named in honor of his parents, the 11-song project discussed their marriage and his interpretations of their relationship during the time the family lived in Portland, Oregon. An immaculate love letter packed with pitch-perfect art-folk, the songs delivered all of the vintage Sufjan elements long-term fans wanted after skronky dalliances like The BQE and The Age of Adz. However, instead of soaking the music in layered of orchestral instrumentation, he chose to build everything on a minimalist guitar-and-vocals foundation. The result was lush production without maximalism that allowed his dense, yet accessible lyrics to take center stage. Despite the kitschy gimmick that propelled him to fame, this is the defining work of his career. – Adam P. Newton

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Toro y Moi – What For? (2015)

The indie rock department has had a generational shift over the past ten years. Instead of the (yaaaaawn) wasteland of hacky sacks and thrift store clothing-clad poseurs, it’s since flourished with women, various people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community as their now disaffected youthful svengalis. Chazwick Bradley Bundick, aka Chaz Bear, creator of Toro y Moi, could have, might have written the album that said “let’s go” and led that diverse indie rock march in 2015. Bundick, the Oakland-based musician and graphic designer, originally hailing from Columbia, South Carolina—and who is both Filipino and Black—entered an indie-rock market where hardly anybody looked like him, preceding by a few years artists like Japanese Breakfast, Jay Som, Bartees Strange, Vagabon, and a slew of other artists who shattered the vanilla indie-rock scene.

Just think, the wide-reaching Dead Oceans imprint, home to Khruangbin, Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, and now Toro Y Moi, might have been humming along to his 2015 ten-track kaleidoscope run through ’60s garage accents, ’70s AM Gold guitar solos, bits of disco, fuzzy Seattle grungy funk, and ’90s power pop twee that is What For? Look at the cover. He’s grinning “Oh, I can do that, fool.” And proceeds serving up time-warp evergreen harmonies and observations shot through yesteryear AOR terrestrial radio playlists with a heavy Todd Rundgren, Big Star, ELO, and Talking Heads vibe, in 37 minutes. Without using one slick dancefloor track, ’cause Chazzy can make that guitar move too. – John-Paul Shiver

Read More: What For?—Toro y Moi’s nod to ’70s AOR rock

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Turnover – Peripheral Vision (2015)

Peripheral Vision is one of the best of the many indie/emo records of the 21st century, one with a legacy large enough to warrant a 10-year anniversary album tour. The album is full of feelings of ennui and longing that translates into addictive listens, like on opening track “Cutting My Fingers Off.” That one song captures all the best parts of Peripheral Vision—a grungy but dreamy sound, a humming overtone to make it all feel a little hazy, and punchy, moody lyrics, like “I hope you’re alright / and I’m sorry that I wasted your time / Never had the intention to make you go.” – Virginia Croft

Read More: Turnover’s Peripheral Vision delivered anthems for outsiders

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Car Seat Headrest – Teens of Denial (2016)

As if providing an answer to the indie predecessors who presented us with stripped down, emotional guitar tracks, Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial is overflowing with raucous, loud, indie rock, full of introspection and reflection—just in a way that feels better to thrash around to. Even the songs that begin on the quieter side explode into bombastic choruses, such as on “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales,” in which Will Toledo sings, “It doesn’t have to be like this,” practically screaming it by the end. The album is a triumphant expression of Toledo’s lyrical talents, many of the songs reading more like a novella, especially on the epic “The Ballad of the Costa Concordia,” a display of Toledo’s singular way with words: “I stay up late every night / out of some general protest / but with no one to tell you to come to bed / it’s not really a contest.” – Virginia Croft

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Emma Ruth Rundle – Marked for Death (2016)

Painted in the same infinite shades of black and white as its cover image, Emma Ruth Rundle’s third solo album is a work of gripping dark rock that palpably oozes widescreen melancholia. Channeling shoegaze, folk, post-rock and even doom metal, these mournful, emotionally-heavy eight tracks are framed in the most expansive of vistas. It’s apt that, a couple of years later, Rundle would decamp to coastal Wales to recharge her creative batteries, because Marked For Death feels like walking along a rain-flecked beach, searching your deepest memories whilst being battered by a life-affirming wind. Brutal thoughts arise (see lyrics like “I can’t do anyone right, I used to be somehow better” from standout track “Hand Of God”) but it’s a nonetheless powerful experience that leaves you feeling all the wiser for undertaking the chilly endeavor. – Tom Morgan

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Mitski – Puberty 2 (2016)

While the broader world became aware of Mitski with her brilliant Be the Cowboy, it is here that she first achieved herself. Her previous record, Bury Me At Makeout Creek, had the lo-fi pop rock/punk lyricism down and mood for days, but it was in the interpolation of Bowie-style art rock into those ideas here that the sound of Mitski as we have come to favor came to be. There is still a primal excitement to this record, the brightness of Talking Heads and the ebullient bounce of ’80s Bowie signaling the bursting of a ceiling and a new threshold of potential. She achieved this potential later, but the thunder crack of her new birth still resounds here. – Langdon Hickman

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Algiers – The Underside of Power (2017)

The opening track of Algiers’ second album (fittingly titled”Walk Like a Panther”) starts with a sampled Fred Hampton speech leading into a blistering postpunk-trap hybrid. “Panther” perfectly showcases the band’s genre-blending and Franklin James Fisher’s voice, but also the album’s unvarnished rage: “You made a whore of the struggle! You made a joke of our shame!” Though the album switches styles and tempos throughout (Joy Division tributes on “Death March;” piano balladry on “Mme. Rieux”), that fury and intensity never disappears. The Underside of Power was recorded during Trump’s first campaign and released the following year, and its subject matter (racist violence, capitalist exploitation, the encroachment of fascism) is only more prescient (and present) today. But I still hold out hope that Fisher’s right when he describes power (on the title track) as “just a game and it can’t go on.” – L.D. Flowers

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Alvvays – Antisocialites (2017)

Red flags go up when a band exists for 14 years yet has only three full-lengths to show for it. But such concerns are misguided when it comes to Alvvays: Their catalog is so sparse is because they pore over their music so intensively that every millisecond of it is crafted just right. Antisocialites epitomizes this approach; each song is exquisitely composed, flawlessly executed and bleeds with TLC. Alvvays strive for perfection just like they do, but the critical difference is that the entire experience—as far as the listener is concerned—is absolutely blissful instead of anxiety-inducing. That Antisocialites also sounds like it was made with ease only reinforces it as a diamond in the rough. -Kurt Orzeck

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Cloakroom – Time Well (2017)

Cloakroom descend from a lineage of stargazing alternative bands such as Hum and Failure, their DNA encoded with both the crunchy heft of grunge and the thick, mesmerizing haze of shoegaze. Though that scarcely scratches the surface of the group’s sophomore album Time Well, their longest and most ambitious album that opened up their spectrum even further to folk and slowcore, dream pop and even the thunderous melancholic doom of Jesu—making its release on Relapse even more of a logical alignment despite not actually being a metal record. The quiet-loud climaxes of side one standouts “Gone But Not Entirely” and “Big World” are hallmarks of where they’ve been, while the psych-folk haze of the title track, the thunderous riffs of “Seedless Star” and “Hymnal,” perhaps the heaviest dream pop song ever written, showed what was just over the horizon as they progressed along their celestial path. – Jeff Terich

Read More: Cloakroom know their product

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Slowdive – Slowdive (2017)

If there’s one thing to appreciate about the career arc of Reading, England dream-poppers Slowdive, it’s their economy of effort. Release massive music, wait two decades, release massive music again? Pretty efficient. And that second salvo began with their 2017 self-titled LP, which coaxed mystique out of some of the simplest of musical passages. Two-note figures on repeat and single plucked tremolo strings by themselves may not sound like much. Run through light-years of reverb, and layered under and around the vocals of Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, they become sturdy vehicles for fascination, joy, and tension. – Adam Blyweiss

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Iceage – Beyondless (2018)

There comes a time in every rocker’s life when we must accept that The Rolling Stones are some of the best to ever do it. While some groups ape their sound and loose rock ‘n’ roll style in a manner that’s frankly insulting, others like Iceage just seem to get it. This isn’t a precise clone, nor should it be; Iceage didn’t cut their teeth on Delta blues and skiffle records. Instead, it reads like the greats of the Minneapolis hardcore scene who decades prior made the same jump, cutting their teeth with punk playing before settling into a loose and hoary rock ‘n’ roll swagger. What constitutes a great rock record rarely changes. Beyondless has that spark, the one that marks it not as a clone but the pure issue. – Langdon Hickman

Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)

Low – Double Negative (2018)

Selecting only a few records from Low’s all-time great discography is a nightmare but, for my money, this is the one. While their middle period saw Low exploring rock and roll in more active tense arrangements, draping themselves in the fineries of Neil Young and other rougher acts, Double Negative, the middle child of their final triptych of more electronic leaning records (pinching Bon Iver’s engineer and beating him at his own game to boot), locates itself in the somber reflections of their earlier foundational slowcore recordings. Their debut carries the heft of a youth in restrictive religion stepping away from that sheltered existence. This, decades later, has the far greater and far more withering weight of a life already lived, held by regret, shame, things that cannot be undone. If it doesn’t slay you in the heart, you aren’t human. – Langdon Hickman

Read More: Treble 100, No. 54: Low – Double Negative

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Mitski – Be the Cowboy (2018)

Mitski’s Be the Cowboy is a short album, clocking in at a measly 32 minutes. Most of the songs are similarly brief, hovering around the 2-minute mark. But Mitski doesn’t need long to dig her way under your skin. These are tracks that seem to grow out of their humble forms, haunting you long after listening. There is an explosive, kaleidoscopic quality too. There is no time for cohesion and careful curation when songs are bursting out of a songwriter as they seem to here. Mitski is laying everything on the table, from the tragicomic disco of “Nobody” to the angular rock of “Remember My Name,” the synth-pop of “Washing Machine Heart” to the strange art-pop of “A Horse Named Cold Air.” After the speed run through Be the Cowboy’s many detours, Mitski reserves her longest track for the heartbreakingly beautiful “Two Slow Dancers.” Beneath all the genre experimentation, it reminds you of the singular songwriting at the core of the project. After the joyride, Mitski lets you plummet down to earth, wrapping all of the record’s drama and anxiety into a shattering meditation on aging love. – Noah Sparkes

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Superchunk – What a Time to Be Alive (2018)

Packed full of relentless, restless beats, tight melodies, and withering political commentary, What A Time To Be Alive is an album that is already impressive and invigorating entirely on its own terms. The fact that it comes from a band who were almost 30 years into their career at the time of its release (to say nothing of their nine-year hiatus at the beginning of the 21st century) only adds to the amazement. Not every band who were seminal players in the ‘90s can also claim to be laying siege to the Trump administration with all the vim and vigor of their early years; but then, not every band is Superchunk. More’s the pity. – Ed Brown

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Big Thief – U.F.O.F. (2019)

On Big Thief’s third LP, Adrienne Lenker leads her Brooklyn band through a treatise on barriers. Her poetics address female avatars important to her (lovers and movie stars, relatives and treasured pets) and how her access to them is limited either by their absence or obstacles to them. Big Thief’s delivery here is particularly precious, a soft-focus yet skronky take on indie singer-songwriting that punctuates the smoky rock cabaret of someone like Marianne Faithfull with bleating Neil Young guitar. The energy of U.F.O.F. is a subtle but insistent throb, where even Lenker’s wails feel like subliminal suggestions of moth cocoons, lake shorelines, and outer space—actual and metaphorical constructs that turn real people, or the ideas of them, into “UFO friends” you want to believe you can maintain relationships with. – Adam Blyweiss

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Black Midi – Schlagenheim (2019)

“Schlagenheim,” the beautifully chaotic 2019 debut album from British post-punk group Black Midi, fuses jazz and prog-rock with smokestacks of industrial noise. The technically proficient group, led by a vocally raving Geordie Greep, scarcely hit a bum note on their proper debut. On “953,” they spin a complex network of sonic threads, heavy with abrasive guitar jabs and rolls, and interspersed with moments of calm and clarity. “Speedway” hums with a persistent, tense energy, and “Near DT, MI” merges math rock with post-punk rage. The title track never takes its foot off the gas, fed by churning guitar riffs, a boiling bass line and Greep’s wails. Schlagenheim culminates with the gushing opus “Ducter,” in which Greep exposes a con artist in spectacular fashion. – Emily Reily

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Jay Som – Anak Ko (2019)

Especially insofar as the word and world of “indie” can be a personal, subjective borderland, Jay Som is quintessential for me. The niche guitar-nerd hype in the college radio office for 2017’s Everybody Works set the scene (we fought over the promo when it arrived) and the follow up improved on the blueprint in every way. Personal experience aside, Anak Ko is the kind of definitive work any artist could hope for. Like on her debut, Melina Duterte personally performed most of the instruments, which gives both albums a simultaneously intimate and highly composed mood. Anak Ko keeps that dreamy atmosphere but explodes the bedroom with more backing instrumentation, more hooks, and even more incisive lyricism. – Flora James

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Angel Olsen – All Mirrors (2019)

There are a number of Angel Olsen records that could easily have appeared on this list. All Mirrors is perhaps the most grandiose of the options, enveloping Olsen’s incredible voice with dense, spacious instrumentation. The opener, “Lark”, is something of a mission statement for the record, any familiar indie rock-isms eventually drowning under waves of soaring, reverb-heavy string arrangements and thunderous drums. It’s a staggering entry point, made all the more remarkable by the fact that when Olsen’s voice takes off, she more than matches the orchestra’s scale and emotive power. After the massive organicism of “Lark,” retro synthesisers enter the frame for large portions of the record, pushing it into ambitious art-pop waters. All Mirrors was one of the more striking artist reinventions of the century, matched only three years later by the magnificent country shift that followed on 2022’s Big Time. – Noah Sparkes

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains (2019)

That the most soulful song on Purple Mountains is called “Darkness and Cold” should tell you something about the general tenor of David Berman’s final project. As he did with Silver Jews, Berman guides us through an acoustic muck of emotion with measured frankness and characteristic wit. As usual, he’s unafraid to square up to despair. You can even see it in the song titles: “She’s Making Friends, I’m Turning Stranger,” “Maybe I’m the Only One For Me,” “That’s Just the Way That I Feel.” After a lifelong up-and-down struggle with his mental health, Berman died by suicide a month after the album came out in 2019. He hadn’t nearly lost his touch. And, iced-over though they may be, Purple Mountains’ joys aren’t likely to fade. – Casey Burke

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow (2019)

Remind Me Tomorrow is Sharon Van Etten at her most corroded. The record is full of aged, warping synths, fuzzed vocals, and crunchy, distorted drums. There is a distinctly analog feel to the music, but the often-touted warmth of old equipment is replaced here by its damaged, rusted quality. Every instrument and vocal track sounds bruised and worn. There are jagged edges, moments of atonal sound design, and Van Etten’s voice sits within that weathered palette, sounding similarly wounded. Even if it’s the arena-sized catchiness of tracks like “Seventeen” and “Comeback Kid” that sticks in your head, Remind Me Tomorrow is a record of incredible emotional breadth, both anthemic at times and hauntingly intimate at others. – Noah Sparkes

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Weyes Blood – Titanic Rising (2019)

On her fourth album and Sub Pop debut, Weyes Blood broke past the quieter, folk-leaning sounds of her earlier records. While those were beautiful in their own ways, Titanic Rising has a more shocking sensibility—almost as if a spiritual event is happening within the ten carefully crafted tracks. Natalie Mering’s vocals are decadent and rich on tracks like “Andromeda,” a glistening, otherworldly track with mesmerizing pedal steel guitar and a warm layer of harmonies. Mering employs a flurry of strings on “Movies” as the track pushes to a dramatic finish, and a rush of glimmering synths on “Wild Time.” All of the components on Titanic Rising come together beautifully—it’s the moment where Weyes Blood soared. – Virginia Croft

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher (2020)

This 2020 slab of atmospheric indie folk finds the light lyrical voice of Bridgers painting intimate snapshots of the world through gentle, if sometimes climactic songs. Five years later this album still holds as much impact with the soft touch of its urgency and knack for pop hooks given subtle depth. At the end of the day what makes an album great is how it stands the test of time, and her vulnerable soul-wrenching lyrics are wistful and endearing in a way that makes each listen still ring as true as the first time you played it. – Wil Lewellyn

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately (2020)

Michael Hadreas has long been one of the best pure songwriters operating in the sprawling world of indie rock. As Perfume Genius, he’s penned seven albums replete with themes of queer love and acceptance in its myriad forms. Set My Heart on Fire Immediately combined post-Sufjan folk with ‘80s rock and ‘60s torch songs, clean pop arrangements serving as the foundation upon which his floating tenor and keening falsetto showcased his talents for poetic lyricism and lovelorn accompaniment. Tracks like “Describe,” “On the Floor,” “Your Body Changes Everything,” and “Nothing At All” overflow with relatable musings love, crushes, lust, and everything in between. It’s an emotionally resonant album and his crowning artistic achievement. – Adam P. Newton

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Protomartyr – Ultimate Success Today (2020)

One of the few albums that seems to have inadvertently predicted the mood of the doom-laden pandemic year that was 2020 (it was recorded in late 2019 and released the following summer), Protomartyr’s fifth album overflows with references to long, confusing days, sweltering cities teetering on the edge of violence, “shut-ins” and, eerily, “built-up respirators.” The band’s brand of post-punk/art rock employs some gripping stretches of tension, with tracks like “Tranquilzer” and “Day Without End” constructed out of nerve-wracking builds and releases. The strongest track on Ultimate Success Today is “June 21,” a nuanced work of exquisite glum rock that sounds like The National chomping down a dose of paranoia-inducing amphetamines. Everything about Ultimate Success Today clicks together perfectly and serves as an often unnerving reminder of a deeply strange time. – Tom Morgan

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud (2020)

As far as indie rock per se goes, there’s a good argument for entering 2017’s Out in the Storm on this list. There’s an even better argument for last year’s raucous Tiger’s Blood. That does not make Saint Cloud a compromise pick, it just puts it into perspective as the best of both worlds, and more. The pensive keys on “Fire” and twangy hook on “Lilacs” are as good as any alt-country indie-ism across Katie Crutchfield’s discography, but here they are accompanied by her most distinctly poetic and direct lyricism. If Saint Cloud is in-between, it’s a raw edge at the limit of genre experimentation. – Flora James

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Yves Tumor – Heaven to a Tortured Mind (2020)

Turin-via-Tennessee artist Yves Tumor has carved out quite a niche this century with their industrial-tinged art rock, and this is another cornucopia of ideas in their growing catalog. This LP tones down the noise just a bit in favor of tuneful R&B melodies, duets with visual and musical artist Hirakish, and the messy Princely funk of “Kerosene!” I wonder if Prince had chosen to master MPCs the same way he mastered guitar and piano if he might have pulled off an album like this. As it stands, Heaven to a Tortured Mind is steeped in the nascent gothic soul movement, then run through with the kind of fuzzed-out drum loops and symphonic samples that propped up Wu-Tang and trip-hop. – Adam Blyweiss 

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

The Armed – ULTRAPOP (2021)

What a difference time can make, huh? Had you only heard The Armed’s material up to this record, our inclusion of ULTRAPOP, a beloved record by those of us here at Treble, you’d rightly question our sanity. But, given the trimming of the edges and boosting of certain experimental directions found in their following record Perfect Saviors, it’s a much easier justification to include this one. ULTRAPOP is still rife with the metal, hardcore and post-hardcore of their earlier material, but suddenly the lights were thrown on, with glitch-heavy electronic pop and noise rock thrown into the mix, clean vocals intermingling with harsh barks and screams in a way that felt more like Flaming Lips gone metallic than the inverse. These songs are blistering, yes, but also brimming with bright color, an ebullient mood and euphoric catharsis. It’s brilliant. – Langdon Hickman

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Helado Negro – Far In (2021)

Each time i’ve caught Helado Negro in San Francisco, I’ve been able to witness how the indie rock scene encompasses so many people and ideas. His shows at Great American Music Hall in 2020 and August Hall in 2022 felt glorious. I am African-American, a 6-foot-plus black dude with a size 14, OK? Most of the time when I attend/cover indie-rock shows, or any rock show for that matter, guess what? I don’t resemble what has gathered en masse. Both Helado Negro shows, heavily populated predominantly Latinx fans, felt snug—beautiful in the most organic fashion.

Far In, his double album debut for 4AD Records from 2021, hit in the same way and quickly became a favorite on “best of 2021” lists for that reason. Singing in English or Spanish, his angelic, telling voice floats over drums and bass. “Gemini and Leo” is the best we got in a pop song that year; it is not a pop song per se, which he said started as a very simple loop with super off-time drums on his MPC 2000 and then was elevated with collaboration—the album was recorded in Marfa, Texas, during Covid—his letting go and infusing dance music energies into the mix. Strafe’s Set It Off was a big influence on him growing up in South Florida, and those vibes run transparent and touch on “Outside the Outside,” another dancefloor pop mixture, where Lange’s whisper coos, like “loyal freaks” do, on those building 808s and handclaps, cements this brown-skinned innovator as more of a cultural icon creating new rules, warm ones, in the indie-rock space. – John-Paul Shiver

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee (2021)

While Japanese Breakfast’s first two albums, Psychopomp and Soft Sounds From Another Planet, were veiled in grief as singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner mourned the loss of her mother, 2021’s Jubilee sweeps the dreary mental cobwebs away to make room for joy. Her goal to make a “warm” album is achieved by balancing synthy Pro Tools with real instrumentation and moments of surprising depth that are sometimes difficult to pin down. Though “Be Sweet” is exuberant dream pop, her earnestness to “believe in something” sticks around and leaves a scar. “Savage Good Boy” creates drama through the lens of material greed, and “Kokomo IN” plays with country influences and catchy indie pop. The more time you spend with Jubilee, the more it reveals what joy actually is—a multi-faceted thing that can be found in the darkest of places. – Emily Reily

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Snail Mail – Valentine (2021)

The second album from Maryland singer-songwriter Lindsey Erin Jordan uses syrupy sweet vocals to deliver subtle but potent venom about love and its pitfalls. She coos, hiccups, and wails, and so do her band’s arrangements. These are songs built around grand 1990s college- and alt-rock traditions: blunt lyrical observations like “When did you start seeing her?”, dipping into quiet/loud dynamics when the band needs to make a not-so-subtle point, songs screeching to a halt when Jordan’s points are made (no refrains needed). Valentine is anything but, exploring the genealogy of emotional frustration that’s been passed down from Joni Mitchell to Juliana Hatfield to Japanese Breakfast. – Adam Blyweiss

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Squid – Bright Green Field (2021)

Squid’s Bright Green Field bursts forth as a prismatic debut album, brimming with turbulent energy and angular rhythms. The UK ensemble delivers a dissonant mix of post-punk urgency, jazz-inflected improvisations and fraught electronic textures. Standout tracks like “Narrator” and “Paddling” exemplify the LP’s restless experimentation, detailing sprawling sonic landscapes with sharp precision. Critics correctly praised Squid for its innovative arrangements and hyperactive intensity, and this album is both challenging and captivating, firmly establishing the band as provocative pioneers in contemporary underground music. – Ernesto Aguilar

Read More: Squid are all about the process

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Black Country, New Road – Ants from Up There (2022)

A post-rock/chamber pop fusion of awe-inspiring vision; Ants From Up There won its prodigiously-talented creators a generation of fans enamoured with its eclectic instrumentation and soulful lyrics. Across 10 sprawling tracks, Vocalist Isaac Wood (who departed the band four days before the album’s release) conjures up some stunning images laden with sharp references to contemporary life: “moving to Berlin”, “Billie Eilish style” etc. “Good Will Hunting” is his masterpiece, full of romantic, ultra-sincere imagery about “traversing the milky way to get home to you”. Of course, the rest of Black Country, New Road more than match his talent. “Basketball Shoes” is a mesmerizing indie-prog epic, while “Chaos Space Marine” is an ornate, intricate thrill ride that sees the band operating together in exhilarating lock-step. An era-defining album that achieves that rarest of feats: it captures something of life in the world today. – Tom Morgan

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Dry Cleaning – Stumpwork (2022)

You wouldn’t think a conversation about a search for otters or an opinion about an odd show are engaging enough to put on wax, but Dry Cleaning singer Florence Shaw dresses up these errant spoken word thoughts in drollness and a deadpan delivery, making them catchy and captivating. With Stumpwork, the English alt-rock band added a few more twists to their mix of jazzy post-punk statements and wistful dreampop. Stumpwork evokes Portishead gloom, early Pretenders sass and Velvet Underground provocation. But Dry Cleaning songs also emit the distinct feeling there’s a material separation dividing Shaw’s sleek, sarcasm-coated musings with the band’s heady swirl of indie guitars. It turns out that combining disaffected nonsense with dirty post-punk can create an infectious disconnect, and Dry Cleaning has mastered the formula. – Emily Reily

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Fontaines D.C. – Skinty Fia (2022)

Fontaines D.C.’s four-album run in the space of just five years is up there with any in the indie rock canon. It’s crazy to think that, until as recently as early-2019, the band were still unknowns. Six years later and the Dublin five-piece are now a world-conquering indie force to be reckoned with. Their third full-length Skinty Fia was the record that affirmed Fontaines D.C. were operating in a class above their peers. A midtempo, moody exercise that lacks the spritely punk energy of Fontaines’ D.C.’s debut and arena hooks of last year’s Romance, a seductive, gloomy air of the Celtic gothic envelops the likes of “How Cold Love Is” and “Roman Holiday.” These tracks pair nicely with a handful of more energetic standouts, such as the kinetic, addictive “Jackie Down The Line” and the marvellous electronic-layered title track. Fontaines D.C. are a band in constant evolution, and Skinty Fia is their most intriguing, endearing permutation. – Tom Morgan

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

MJ Lenderman – Boat Songs (2022)

MJ Lenderman’s instant classic Boat Songs is the meeting of generational waters. It’s for the dads who feel weird saying “I love you” to their sons, and for the sons who feel weird saying “I love you” back. What makes Boat Songs really shine is Lenderman’s effortless blend of lyricism and musicality. “Huge water slide / Into a drained out,” he sings on “You Are Every Girl to Me,” pausing before he and the band spiral down into the “Community swimming pool.” This record is as modern as it is rooted in rock tradition, the only record that can cohesively tie dudes rock references to imperfect sports legends with Six Flags heartbreak and a Disney-published MMORPG. – Patrick Pilch

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Wet Leg – Wet Leg (2022)

Plenty of musical acts across the pop spectrum have committed to fantastical outfits and roleplaying, but at a time when “cosplay’ entered common lexicon this music not only exemplified the concept but made it meta. Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers are Wet Leg, and their self-titled debut featured this pair of British women channeling French women channeling The Strokes. Their bountiful buzzy hooks were reason enough for songs like “Chaise Longue” and “Wet Dream” to have placements in every streaming-service movie and series ever made. The real draw? The late-millennial sneer in lyrics like ”I don’t wanna follow you on the ‘gram/I don’t wanna listen to your band,” positing basicness as both a social problem and an artistic solution. – Adam Blyweiss

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Rough Trade (vinyl)

Model/Actriz – Dogsbody (2023)

New York’s Model/Actriz spent a good seven years honing their live show before releasing their first album, Dogsbody, so by the time it arrived they were already a well-oiled machine of hedonism and menace, of cacophony and ecstasy. Nothing about the album is particularly subtle, from the violent arsenal of sounds it comprises to the weaponized dildo on its cover, to its presentation of sex as body horror and vice versa. Which probably on paper makes it sound like a lot less enjoyable than it is—but by god, is it ever. Provoking feelings of pleasure in movement and discomfort in passive stillness, Model/Actriz openly court ugliness and antagonism in the pursuit of physical liberation. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Ratboys – The Window (2023)

Among so many things, The Window is an antidote for fractured times. Ratboys’ fifth album is all craft, no fluff: not a wasted vocal lilt or a guitar breakdown out of place. It’s restrained, but endlessly interesting for its innocent emotional ambushes, the way it dramatizes small moments—first punchy, then poignant, now both. Like in life, the intensity varies: “No Way” and “Empty” are impassioned kiss-offs, “Morning Zoo” outlines gentle melancholy, while in the title track, the simple image of a window shoulders the weight of frustrated grief. And every song is constructed so thoughtfully, with just the right turn to maximize each of its emotional peaks, that it gives something new away with every listen. – Casey Burke

Read More: Ratboys are growing together

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Sweeping Promises – Good Living Is Coming for You (2023)

There’s a generation or two of listeners now who don’t associate “lo-fi” with home-recorded Guided by Voices and Daniel Johnston records—such is the inevitable evolution of our musical taxonomy. (Joke’s on us—we’re trying to summarize 25 years of “indie rock”!) But Lawrence, Kansas group Sweeping Promises capture the warm-and-fuzzy comfort hiss of DIY’s glory days through an outsize songwriting talent that far outpaces their recording budget. The group’s sophomore album Good Living Is Coming For You descends from the new wave lineage of Blondie and The B-52’s with the punk urgency of early Sleater-Kinney, and with energy and urgency to spare (and just the right amount of saxophone). Their sound is delightfully analog in all the right ways, but its appeal is more universal than that—there’s not a moment among these 30 minutes that isn’t a riot. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Wednesday – Rat Saw God (2023)

As the specter of AI-created music dominated discourse in the 2020s, Asheville, North Carolina’s Wednesday offered as stunning a rebuttal to the idea of a future of machine-learning listening material. Rat Saw God, Wednesday’s fourth album, wraps snapshots of autobiographical narratives in sense memories and trickles of nostalgia and trauma—teenagers having their stomach pumped from overdosing on Benadryl, drinking piss-colored Fanta and listening to Drive-By Truckers on a drive back from Dollywood, and starting fires in fields from setting off bottle rockets. Karly Hartzman’s affecting, funny and charmingly strange storytelling finds an equally idiosyncratic backing in Wednesday’s arrangements, leaping from hook-laden alt-country to dense, Sonic Youth style riffs, a mixture of sounds and experiences too specific, too weirdly human to come from anywhere else. Not to mention an algorithm could never come up with riffs this sick. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee (2024)

You can drive forever in North America. Everywhere you go you’ll hear Diamond Jubilee. Cindy Lee’s seventh studio album is like a long drive with everything to think about. It’s a dream and a memory, a lover and a cheeseburger, a wish and a prayer. This massive, life-affirming triple record is as classic as it is contemporary, as timeless as it is present. No two-hour pop record has any business being this good, and the fact “If you hear me crying” is the 25th track is downright absurd. There’s recency bias and there’s instant canon. This record is undoubtedly the latter. – Patrick Pilch

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven (2024)

Mannequin Pussy started off as an early-’10s punk rock band, an aesthetic they carried with them to their fourth full-length album, I Got Heaven, but it was the preponderance of melodies recalling late-’80s and early-’90s alt-rock bands like Pixies and The Breeders that made the record so infectious and resonant. The album has its share of punk rock rippers such as “OK? OK! OK? OK!” “Aching,” and “Of Her,” but indie rock melodies like those on the title track, “Loud Bark,” “Nothing Like,” “I Don’t Know You,” “Sometimes,” and finale “Split Me Open” are what made the album linger in the memory long after. – Greg Hyde

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Jessica Pratt – Here in the Pitch (2024)

If Ann-Margret’s early 60s records were a bit more laid back and had lyrics written at the caliber of, well, Jessica Pratt, we might’ve had something resembling Here in the Pitch many years ago. No matter, because we have it now. For all the influences her work exhibits (from Cafe Wha? folk to Wall-of-Sound pop and bossa-nova rhythms) Pratt’s artistic vision is decidedly her own. Pitch is the boldest manifestation yet of that vision, with more expansive arrangements and greater heft to the sound (whether or not there are major accompaniments to Pratt’s voice and guitar). And few songwriters currently working match her elegant language: “I want to be the sunlight of the century/I want to be a vestige of our senses free.” Goddamn. – L.D. Flowers

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Mount Eerie – Night Palace (2024)

Phil Elverum projected a haunting and awe-inspiring vision back in his early twenties with The Glow Pt. 2, and since then he’s lived many different lives: reshaping and renaming his songwriting project to Mount Eerie, adopting black metal aesthetics and slathering his voice in Auto-Tune, offering a devastating expression of grief, falling in love, falling back out of love, and ultimately reviving The Microphones, if temporarily. Night Palace is among the most powerful and overwhelming of his incarnations, an 80-plus minute set of songs of poetic and profound realizations and freewheeling musical eclecticism. Night Palace also connects back to The Glow in ways that few of Elverum’s albums have since, in both specific references and its palette of sounds. There’s joy and sorrow here, mischief and conscientiousness, mystery and unknowability, a kind of mystical convergence of past, present and what’s yet to be. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

Nilüfer Yanya – My Method Actor (2024)

On her third album, UK singer/songwriter Nilufer Yanya hones in on her off-kilter style of indie pop rock in a new way—each track feels even more fine tuned, leaning into the weirder moments and brash guitar twang, like on standout “Like I Say (I runaway)”. There’s a sense of freedom that runs like a river through the album’s eleven songs, as Yanya’s shimmering vocals bring tracks like “Binding” and “Mutations” to a stunning level, adding an ethereal sheen against the accompanying instrumental’s heavier moments. My Method Actor finds Yanya at the perfect intersection of brilliant lyricism and effervescently cool sound. – Virginia Croft

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Turntable Lab (vinyl)

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