When listening to Icky Mettle, you feel included, like they're the crew you've known your entire life. The fact that it's both very relevant today and a thrilling snapshot of the restlessly creative 90's underground is no small achievement.

It proves that with the same attention, wit, grace and intellect that these musicians gave to their songwriting, they can indeed construct a retrospective that not only reflects the brilliance of their band but heightens and intensifies it as well.

There is so, so much content, so beautifully and flawlessly presented that it can be baffling at times. The Suburbs, to many, was decade-defining music. Reflektor, I feel, through both content and design, will be artist-defining.

Has the album of 2009 been unleashed in January? I can’t see anything else coming near it.

Unsurprisingly, The Lost Tapes is a masterpiece in his own right, much like previous revolutionary releases Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi.

Listen carefully to Fantasy Black Channel, as the journey is slightly different with each listen. Every surreal note smacks with the infectious energy and vigor of youth, yet Late of the Pier’s musical proficiency and mélange of influences definitely belie their tender ages (early 20s).

If this isn't an instant classic, it's only because it takes some time (and ears) to appreciate.

Dark Twisted Fantasy is an album full off melodic ideas, copious guest features, winding songs, unexpected twists, and improbable pairings.

If there's been a better album, hip-hop or not, out this year, I haven't heard it.

I'm gushing, I know, but listening to something as lovely and effusive as this album on repeat can only inspire those same qualities in those fortunate enough to hear. That having been said, consider Yesterday and Today for your next indiscretion.

Lamar's no impressionist, however; his lyrical gifts weave a complex, yet uniquely-West Coast set of influences into something that feels new and forward-thinking.

For all the over-arching themes, The Suburbs is the most rocking Arcade Fire album yet.

What makes it breathe, what allows it to flourish above its glitchy techno, its processed wizardry... what untangles it from a mess of circuitry and power strips and anti-virus pop-up warnings, is Yorke's incredible, distinctive voice.

They deliver on [Sun Giant EP's] five-song teaser's promise and then some with their first full-length, a self-titled gem that already seems set to wind up near the top of any right-thinking person's year-end list.

The xx recorded not only the year's best debut but also one of its best albums, period.

Dear Science is another highlight from a band whose career has essentially been an extended one.

Old is Brown’s best work. Complex beyond its two-sided structure, it is filled with narratives that collide, sentiments that conflict and resolutions that come to nothing.

It's part of the final duality that makes The Way Out a success: learning how it was constructed is fascinating, but it's equally enthralling to go into it completely ignorant.

Aceyalone can't do it by himself, and by finding a kindred musical spirit in RJD2, he manages to make an album as expansive as his talent continually hints at.

Bleak, distant, polarizing, and beautiful, Wolfe’s fourth album makes a gargantuan impact.

With his band's fourth studio album, frontman Will Sheff stakes a claim here for the right to be called the best songwriter working right now.

Rare is the album that's able to expand an established band's fan base while completely satisfying the cult of early flag planters, but Strawberry Jam has that chance.

On The Door, there is a sense that the sounds happening are not the products of the people creating them but rather those of some inscrutable (and vaguely dangerous) pulsing energy below our feet. It’s an amazing effect. And it’s created through the sheer power of quantity and repetition.

Two albums later, on yet another ingeniously titled album, Art Brut vs. Satan, the band members have done something no one expected: They’ve turned into socially conscious critics of their woebegone generation without losing the charm that made fans love them in the first place.

The Modest Mouse influence is apparent but in no way detrimental to Wolf Parade's sound.

At a focused 48-minutes, The Bones of What You Believe comes soaring through and makes its difficult for you not to press replay when it all fades out.

From the lavish orchestration courtesy of Van Dyke Parks to the richness and sheer abundance of language at Newsom's disposal, Ys is a supreme achievement.

Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty isn't just an expertly produced and performed slab of brilliantly odd, futuristic dance music. It isn't just the best rap album of the year so far.

Unlike previous releases, when we were taken on several rides within a solitary track, the thrills and tempo changes have been stretched out to album length, making this offering essentially a forty-three-minute song, with each track becoming a spike or dip along the way.

Real Life Is No Cool is essentially all pop structures. It's maybe an accident that Lindstrøm and Christabelle's project so successfully feels like something hip and modern, like a photograph hung in a museum or cut from an obscure magazine that's suddenly become part of the landscape.

Hercules & Love Affair is a testament to the great foresight and control is required in a disco producer to keep the track from lunging into an abyss of low-blow kitsch, and to be able to stimulate the ears and feet at the same time.

McCombs still has an ear for language and roll-off-the-tongue singing. His voice coats the lyrics like thick warm caramel on this one. Though often obtuse and twisted, McCombs includes some straightforward lyrics, as well, with some political commentary to boot.

As expected, the album's highlights are its patient explorations.

Of all the group's works, Pick a Bigger Weapon has a greater sense of inclusion and belonging.

A noticeable departure on Kiss Each Other Clean is that Beam seems to be having a genuinely good time on the album.

If there's one thing made clear by the satisfying catharsis and musical quantum leap of In And Out Of Youth And Lightness, it's that Patterson should ignore his earlier advice more often if it results in albums of this caliber.

Wild Flag is the creator of an absurdly good album, one of the most vital of 2011. Wild Flag is not a supergroup. They are a super group.

What makes Marling engaging is that her music presents scenarios without deliberately sounding like poetry or art. Her songs do not emphasize the beauty of sounds or musicality of words so much as clip insightful observations from conversations.

On their fourth album, Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free, they've simultaneously intensified and refined that blend, even as they've shaved off one of their original four members.

If there's ever been an advertisement for allowing bands to develop before they blow up, Native Speaker is it. You'll probably listen to more immediate albums this year, but few will have the down-the-rabbit-hole quality that marks Native Speaker for success.

To call the album the band's most accessible to date is no slur. There's nothing wrong with accessible indie rock when it's this pristine and polished.

On Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, Cave weaves yet another tapestry of characters.

Donuts is a big black pot of sonics, comparable only to Madlib's 2002 effort, Blunted in the Bombshelter, the difference being that this is all original material.

If Donuts was Jay Dee's swan song, The Shining is a glimpse of what his work may have sounded like in the future.

Ali can do this, can take the familiar, the overly confrontational, even the trite and overdone, and make it riveting, because he has a voice that strains syllables so that the meanings of his words are made perfectly clear--you can't escape what he's saying--and a flow that loads and unleashes relentlessly.

The Body, The Blood, The Machine is the holy grail of anti-political/anti-religion records to come out in the last seven years.

By investing a now-classic catalog with immediacy, freshness and a delicate, humbling charm, Sugar Mountain not only stands as the best argument for the Archives series and illumination it could provide, but as a classic live record in its own right.

Return to Cookie Mountain makes Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes look almost silly by comparison.

This Is for the White in Your Eyes is a come-out-of-the-gate winner.

Ballad of the Broken Seas is mysterious and theatrical and totally cool.

Mono has upped the post-rock ante with You Are There.

Vast in scope and breathtaking in its beauty, Illinois may very well be the album that heralds Sufjan Stevens as one of this young century’s most talented artists.

Where You Go I Go Too takes the meaning of the term "full-length" quite literally, stretching his already epic electronic disco into works of effortless symphonic grandeur.

The songs sound as modern and fresh as if they were recorded last year.

Under Great White Northern Lights is a perfect explanation of the band's significance to doubters, now and in the future.

Case's genius as a writer, evident from track to track, stems from her ability to write lyrics that conjure up amazingly clear images but that still leave the songs as a whole up to interpretation.

This time around, Zomby isn't constraining himself. This record sounds big.

With In Ghost Colours, Cut Copy have created a record that is both en vogue and timeless, familiar yet fresh, full of glossy optimism, and unforgettably gorgeous from start to finish.

The beautifully (which is to say, lightly) remastered album, and the warts 'n all bonus disc shows us just how good of a band Sebadoh were, and why they became far more than just the band Barlow started after he left Dinosaur Jr.

It helps that Teen Dream, Beach House's third album, is the best thing the band has done. Legrand and her bandmate, Alex Scally, have been ready for a homerun shot since 2006's selt-titled debut, and they cracked this one into the stratosphere.

If you’re only going to buy one Belle & Sebastian album (and shame on you if you are), make it this one.

Orphans is something akin to taking a journey through a familiar yet entirely foreign dream-place.

A mountain of shambolic, livewire B-sides and covers of heroes and influence ranging from the Fall to Echo and the Bunnymen, help add a sense of balance and ballast to Brighten the Corners. It makes for an expanded vision of the original while at the same time proving that the original’s vision wasn’t quite so narrow after all.

This is a great record, full with a daring, hard-earned hope, and a deep emotion. And that's something a lot of records could really use these days.

Nearly everything on Minimum-Maximum sounds astoundingly fresh.

Bromst annihilates all the expectations that have come to be expected of Deacon, without abandoning what made him everyone’s favorite dance-party czar.

Only Built for Cuban Linx...Pt. 2 is top-to-bottom brilliant, and it's energy and emotion is too infectious not to inspire a dozen great hip-hop records to come.

They're a tight fit: Ant likes to experiment, and Ali's nimble enough to keep up and make it work.

Strikes with a magnificent urgency.

Back to Black stands in testament to the fact that talent and originality still exist.

Total immersion in the passion of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah reveals the true power of music as a means of artistic expression.

A lean, focused record, Scale is Herbert's best record to date, and a must-buy for any dance-music fan.

The Chemistry of Common Life is not a technically proficient album despite its epic leanings. Like most albums primarily consisting of anthems, its impact tapers off slightly on repeated listens. But the sheer power of the album is key.

The members of 13 & God have created a genuinely rewarding record that is better than the sum of its parts.

You can see every angle and every side of the shape they've made. And the unimpeachable logic of each song, added to their odd tunefulness of the songs, makes them exciting to listen to.

Tears of the Valedictorian is an incredibly dense record and may take several passes before you can even begin to peel away its layers. That sense of rigor, though, is what makes it so arresting.

Rabbit Habits struck me most where it rescues the jazziness that's sorely missing from 2006's "Six Demon Bag." At the same time, though, the band continues to develop some productive tendencies from that sophomore outing.

There is something distinctly perfect about the naivety that the Pains of Being Pure at Heart seem to effortlessly inject into every bouncy ballad of young love and young living that makes their self-titled debut not only a welcome throwback but a much needed vacation from over-calculation.

In 2006, it seemed like Beach House couldn't outlive Beach House. In 2012, Bloom is the bar to clear.

In Advance of the Broken Arm is at least two songs too long. Yet Stern's manner of weaving together fiercely subjective, lyrical daydreaming with Olympus-level fret-searing finally means that the album justifies the majority of its many decisions.

The result is Kala a stark confrontation of set notions of authenticity and identity--and my new favorite record.

Food & Liquor is the best hip-hop album of 2006.

The project is structured much like a high-end runway show, so although most songs work on their own, they’re far more revelatory as a group.

It surpasses the previous Circulatory System effort, and stands to rival the best of Olivia Tremor Control's output.

It's impossible to guess what kind of album would've turned out had this seen the light of day two years ago, when it was originally expected. Chances are, though, we wouldn't be talking about intensity or hunger or survival with the same emotion in our voices.

Cape Dory is not the kind of album that heralds the emergence of some great new talent, necessarily. It just does what it set out to do, and it does so perfectly.

It plainly improves Grizzly Bear’s sound, and lends itself well to multiple spins, because each repeated listen reveals another perfectly crafted shard you missed on the last go-round.

The addition of vocals may initially turn off some, but in time the new style melds with the old, much in the same way that what has come before sits comfortably next to what is yet to come throughout this forty-two minute album.

Public Strain improves on Women in every way, which is no small feat. It's 13 minutes long than its predecessor, but Women doesn't use the extra time to spread out. The band keeps the tension up by building the various lean sounds of that record into new, more muscular variations.

It's a bit more playful and pop than its predecessor, but it retains Tiga’s signature finely tuned electrohouse sensibilities.

the majority of the album is exactly what indie rock has been lacking for over a decade, and this is too crucial a release to get caught up in nitpicking.

Each pass cements that Stevens has done the impossible yet again: He's released another album that's both genre-defining and genre-defying.

As a cohesive album and a personal statement, Sound of Silver is superior in most every way.

The songs are classic Mogwai, only more sophisticated--and, as such, startling different.

From its painstaking production to its dense lyrical constructs to its mammoth choruses, High Violet is likely to be one of the year's best.

Its muscular confidence and stylistic purity make it a must-listen for the psychedelically inclined, as well as an easy candidate for one of the best records of the year.

Though the narratives are harder to follow, and the refrains more verbose (or simply absent), this music is still full of youthful anger. The nature of it is simply more suitable for a recent-high-school-graduate-aged kid grappling with more knotty insecurities. It’s also probable that much of Earl’s younger audience has grown up with him, and will relate to this impressive record even more deeply than his first.

They reproduce, even with simple materials and simple words, complex emotions and ideas. And at the same time, they just make you want to sing, freak-out, and play beach-blanket bingo in a basement.