1. MGMT
Wielding the shorthand for 'Management' as a four-letter handle, New Yorker hipsters MGMT have come from the pop-cultural fringes to land prime summer-festival stages and surprising chart positions. The Brooklynite pair first disseminated their debut album, Oracular Spectacular, as digital release back in October of 2007. By the time the set was sent out into the physical world on pressed-up compact-disc in January, they'd earned a buzzed-up place in the blogosphere for their genre-juggling style, lurid aesthetic, and the kookily kaleidoscopic clip for their satirical single "Time To Pretend." Whilst no one's suggesting their music's made of long-lasting merit, for 2008, at least, MGMT have been much fun for many.More »
2. Vampire Weekend
You could make a convincing case that 2007 was the year Vampire Weekend broke out. For a band who, to that stage, hadn't released a single thing, the fresh-faced, pleasingly preppy Columbia University graduates seemed semi-ubiquitous for stretches of late-'07. Yet, it wasn't until January of the ought-eight that Vampire Weekend were on the record: the debut VW LP showcasing the quartet's sunny-and-sweet wedding of West African rhythm to indie-pop jangle and tertiary-educated lyricism. Where the overload of internet-bred pre-release hype set Vampire Weekend up to be on the receiving end of the mother of all backlashes, the undeniable quality of their first-ever disc proved defense enough against legions of doubters.
3. Fleet Foxes
“You get thrust into the limelight real fast these days,” Robin Pecknold, furry-faced leader of Seattle's Fleet Foxes, lamented to me way back in April. Though his rockband's self-titled, longplaying debut wouldn't be unleashed upon the world, by Sub Pop, until May, Pecknold could already read the writing on the wall. A month before Fleet Foxes would make their official entry into the pop-cultural consciousness, and already the pre-release buzz was nearing a feverous pitch. And, for once, it was for good reason. On their first album, Fleet Foxes make like some mournful, magical marriage of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and My Morning Jacket, knocking out glorious four-part harmonies over twangy, coyly pretty, country-psych jams.
4. No Age
Though Sub Pop had inked up Los Angelino noiseniks No Age back in September of 2007, not even those who toil for the old grunge behemoth themselves could've possibly expected the effects-blasting, shoegazing, largely lo-fi duo to do such serious business. Since issuing their second record, Nouns, in May, No Age have become one the defining acts of the ought-eight, crossing over from the art-rock fringes to something seeming more and more like the mainstream. Given No Age's most uncommercial bent, theories range as to why the album's captured the imagination of so many. My best guess is that Nouns' noisy, distorted, bashed-out indie-rock is a harbinger for a full-blown early-'90s revival.More »
5. Los Campesinos!
Hyperactive, hyper-twee Welsh pop jamboree Los Campesinos! have made 2008 not simply their breakout year, but their year, period. After dishing up their debut disc, Hold on Now, Youngster..., back in February, those exuberant Los Camp! kids turned around and served up their second album, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed in October. Each album showcases the smartypants septet as a co-ed combo bursting with ideas, fond of shouting, and well-studied in indie lore. Los Campesinos! cemented their credentials as on-the-pulse listeners when they pulled together an all-killer UK tour, to launch We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, in which their personally-picked openers were fellow '08 breakout alums No Age and Times New Viking.More »
6. Times New Viking
If ever there were poster-children for the rise and rise of the lo-fi revival, it's Times New Viking. The art-school-sired trio of kids from Columbus, Ohio seemingly only roll tape on their short, shrill, screechy indie-rock songs with levels pushed way into the red; their overdriven, ultra-distorted, washed-out recordings building a shrine to the original lo-fi movement. On their third album, and first for Matador, Rip It Off, Times New Viking fuzz their way through a semi-audible series of songs recorded in such poor fidelity they turn familiar instruments alien: guitar sounding like radio static, keyboards like boiling kettles, and drums like cardboard boxes filled with saucepan lids.
7. Vivian Girls
Vivian Girls also wield a bitchin' brand of lo-fidelity frolickry. The trio of tattooed dames kick out a series of serious jams writ short and shambolic, their fondness for fuzzed-out guitar and push-beat drumming showing debts owed to twee-pop, garage-rock, and old girl group records. Updating the Shangri-Las' bad-girls-from-New-York rep for the new-millennium, the VGs knock out peppy pop-songs matching sweet harmonies with a swaggerin' attitude. Released by iconic garage-rock imprint In the Red, Vivian Girls' self-titled LP knows the secret to rock'n'roll success: simplicity. On the suitably bratty "No," for e.g., they shout that titular refutation over and over, over top of 83 seconds' worth of furious, distorted, cymbal-splashing fun.
8. Crystal Stilts
Crystal Stilts have shared many things with Vivian Girls: shows, a drummer, and, most of all, a fondness for reverb-drenched, ghostly garage-rock songs. On their first-ever album, Alight of Night, the Brooklyn-based quartet dowse their languorous tunes in so much reverberation and echo they achieve a strangely spectral quality. With Brad Hargett's half-slurred baritone halfway to ghostly moans, Crystal Stilts' sparse, solemn pop-songs stage a séance summoning the spirits of countless musical eccentrics, from the 13th Floor Elevators and the Velvet Underground to Joy Division, the Clean, and even the Walkmen. It's a moody, gloomy mix that's proved too hip for countless recently-smitten listeners to resist.
9. Chairlift
In 2006, the members of Chairlift abandoned Boulder, Colorado, for the far brighter lights of Brooklyn, eventually landing in a budding scene with nascent outfits like Yeasayer and MGMT. Sharing a similar penchant for dabbling in various nefarious genres, Chairlift fuse electro-pop, '80s power-balladry, and lazy country twang on their debut album, Does You Inspire You. Having initially catered to a cult-like following, Chairlift were recently thrust out of the underground when their sweet-tooth'd single "Bruises" was chosen as the song to shill a new array of iPod Nanos. And if being the soundtrack to iPod sales turned Feist from part-time Broken Social Scenester to Grammy-conquering superstar, then the sky's the limit for Chairlift.
10. Lykke Li
“I've been talking about myself all year,” sighs Lykke Zachrisson. The 22-year-old Swedish starlet, aka Lykke Li, has been one of '08's most fawned-over new arrivals: her 1st LP, Youth Novels, adopted as the thinking-feller's pop record. Dodging the autotune-wielding over-production of chart-pop, Zachrisson and Bjorn Yttling —of, of course, Peter, Bjorn & John and Yttling Jazz— have fashioned an odd, indie-ish set of sweetly, sad, memorable tunes from the attack/decay of actual acoustic instruments. Lykke Li also took part in one of my most memorable random musical moments of the year: an ad-hoc on-the-streets cover of Wendy Rene's “After Laughter (Comes Tears)” with fellow Swedish songstress El Perro Del Mar.