10. Washed Out

"Feel It All Around"

[Mexican Summer]

A year ago, Ernest Greene wasn't singing, really. Nine months ago, he wasn't making glimmering lo-fi electronic pop as Washed Out. Until October, you couldn't buy any of his stuff in physical form. Not long before you finally could, he would've had no reason to ask upstart labels Mexican Summer or Mirror Universe to press more than tiny numbers of his Life of Leisure 12" EP or High Times cassette. Who would be interested in them? A lot of people, it turns out, and "Feel It All Around" is the biggest reason why.

Washed Out's first single doesn't tell you what, exactly, you're supposed to be "feel"ing, but that's the idea. Twinkling synths, amniotic vocal drone, undulating bass, and chockablock percussion all imagine a hazy innocence that's just out of reach. Greene's wispily multi-tracked ache is no more clearly articulated. Anybody truly scandalized about this track's sampling of Gary Low's Italo-disco jam "I Want You" would've been just as pissed at the 1983 original for having synths. The past isn't as sublime as you remember it. The present always ends too soon. --Marc Hogan

9. Girls

"Lust for Life"

[True Panther]

For a band that's inspired so much record-collector-rock referencing, it's no shock that Girls would brazenly swipe a well-worn Iggy Pop title for the first song on their first album. But if Iggy's anthem was about getting fucked up, Girls' version is about being a fuck-up-- less a celebration of excess than an appeal for basic human needs. It's tempting to filter frontman Christopher Owens' lyrical pleas through the lens of his religious-cult background, transforming the seemingly throwaway requests for "a pizza and a bottle of wine" into the song's most resonant moments and shedding light on an upbringing devoid of the most simple pleasures. But from that bracing first line-- "I wish I had a boyfriend," delivered by an ostensibly heterosexual singer-- it's clear that Owens is really singing for any outcast who's sick of feeling sorry for themselves and ready for "a brand new start." That eagerness is manifested in the song's blurry-handed jangle riff, which makes Owens sound like he's in such a hurry to turn a new leaf that he doesn't even take the time to fashion a proper chorus. But just when you expect the band to kick into a second-verse rock-out, Girls respond with more playful gestures: cheeky doo-wop harmonies, tambourine shakes and handclaps-- inclusive, participatory devices that underscore the fact that "Lust for Life" is less about Owens' life than your own. --Stuart Berman

8. Phoenix

"Lisztomania"

[Glassnote/Loyauté]

Phoenix make it look easy. Their jeans, tones, scarves, hooks, arrangements; it all comes together on stage and on record with minimal fuss. But writing succinct and powerful pop that has the ability to serve grad students and Nano'd teens is, in fact, quite difficult. Don't take my word for it. Just ask singer Thomas Mars, who airs out his music-making frustrations all over "Lisztomania".

"So sentimental/ Not sentimental, no/ Romantic, not disgusting yet," he starts (and stops), dragging his side-margin notes to the fore. This is a behind-the-scenes, neurotic, Woody Allen-meets*-8 1/2* meta anthem that tries to get to the root of universal appeal without pandering to it. Sure, the song's surface sheen is meticulously catchy, but there's a lot more here than that. Along the way, Mars is disgusted, discouraged, misguided, distant, lonely. "From a mess to the masses," he wails, throwing his hands up at the prospect of converting a bunch of riffs, beats, and brainwaves into something worthy of a sold-out crowd. And then he leads his band through something worthy of several sold-out crowds. No sweat. --Ryan Dombal

7. Big Boi [ft. Gucci Mane]

"Shine Blockas"

[LaFace]

That Big Boi's solo album still hasn't seen the light of day is further proof that the record industry is irreparably broken. "Shine Blockas" should be more than a rap blog curio. It's the sort of track that we should hear blaring out of every passing Civic. The track works as a study in contrasts. Even more than usual, OutKast's still-rapping half raps in darting, stuttery little bursts, his flow fighting its way upstream on the beat, dropping syllables in places nobody would expect. Gucci's guest spot does just the opposite. It's a fully intuitive vocal, his hoarse, marbled monotone drifting lazily over the cascading beat like he was born rapping on it. Cutmaster Swiff's lush, strobing Harold Melvin sample might be fundamentally opposed to the dinky synth symphonies that Gucci generally favors, but he makes rapping over it sound like the easiest thing in the world. Big Boi makes it sound like the most difficult, but he still sticks it. None of these ingredients seem like they should work together, but everything piles on top of everything else, and against odds, the song turns itself into a towering anthem of self-assurance. --Tom Breihan

6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs

"Zero"

[Interscope]

Yeah Yeah Yeahs' take on electro-pop is all harsh lighting and exposed wires, their machines powering up in fits and starts while Karen O tells you the cold truth: "You're a zero. What's your name? No one's gonna ask you." It could be a corporation or a subculture, but the rules are the same: you start as nothing and you crawl and claw your way up doing exactly what you're told. But when you do fight to the top your reward is the most glorious release: the crunched-up cyber-glam riffing that's "Zero"'s own ladder to the sun. It lets Karen O cut loose, too, the restrained creaks and tremors in her voice becoming cries and gasps as the song fills splendidly out. In another world and a less bombed-out market it could have been their "Heart of Glass", crossing over to an audience of people who never cared about their punky pedigree. A shame it didn't find that public, but this is pop steely enough to need no wider validation. --Tom Ewing

5. Grizzly Bear

"Two Weeks"

[Warp]

A better name would be Teddy Bear, such is the unlikely appeal of this unassuming Brooklyn foursome. But just how did they manage to charm the indie elite and Jay-Z and Solange and Beyoncé and your mom and scores of Twilight-addled tweens? It wasn't by pandering-- the carefully honed Grizzly sound has progressed naturally, organically, from Ed Droste's bedroom recording days, creeping through the quiet spaces of Yellow House and finally blossoming fully on this year's Veckatimest. No track better typifies the fully-formed Grizzly Bear than "Two Weeks", but it's not the craftsmanship that's winning people over and making them want to spin this one again and again. It's the intangible, of course, the sound of a band that has struck upon something timeless, inspired, holistic, and-- it bears (ahem) mentioning-- utterly wholesome. Some people will hear "Two Weeks" and instantly feel better about their day, some will want to join a boys' choir, and most will feel the urge to share this exceptional thing with those close to them. --Matthew Solarski

4. Bat For Lashes

"Daniel"

[Parlophone/Astralwerks]

With a knack for high-concept storytelling and a distinct visual aesthetic to accompany her rich, moody pop, Bat for Lashes' Natasha Khan may be the closest thing to a video star in today's indie realm. Though perhaps not as iconic as her Donnie Darko-inspired clip for 2007's "What's a Girl to Do?", the video for "Daniel", the standout from her Two Suns LP, matches the song's hope and longing. In it, Khan wrestles with sorrow (in the form of faceless, black-clad dancers) as she races toward the titular character and the track's skyward chorus. This struggle for salvation is central to "Daniel"'s appeal, and Bat for Lashes play masterfully with shades of light and dark to achieve the effect. With its dark romance, soaring vocal hook, and skillful songcraft, "Daniel" does feel like a direct descendant to similar work by Kate Bush and Sinead O'Connor, though I'm also reminded of songs like Concrete Blonde's "Caroline"-- the kind of goth-tinged gem that, sadly, seems to have disappeared from the airwaves. --Joe Colly

__3. Phoenix

"1901"

__[Glassnote/Loyauté]

In Amadeus, Antonio Salieri wonders how such beautiful music can come from a buffoon like Tom Hulce's Mozart. There might also be some American indie rock Salieris stewing over these French invaders Phoenix waltzing over here and perfecting their genre. Even more than 2006's exquisite It's Never Been Like That, the singles on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix demonstrate with arrogant ease how disheveled indie rock tropes can be reshuffled into straight-laced pop gold.

When "1901" debuted on the Phoenix website with animated pink shards slashing across a black backing, it looked like the track's error-message synthesizers were clawing a neon marquee out from underneath the sooty abyss. And the song itself is similar restoration, layering sloppy guitar jangle into a propulsive motor and goosing the synthesizers into an air-raid crescendo until the whole mess is a glass-smooth shiny bauble. People in indie rock circles often talk about hit singles in alternate dimensions, but Phoenix prove you don't need quantum theory to make pop out of indie rock ingredients... you just need to be from Versailles. --Rob Mitchum

2. Dirty Projectors

"Stillness Is the Move"

[Domino]

When avant-garde musicians try to engage with pop, they reveal a lot about themselves. People who make difficult music sometimes act as if the kind of music that catches on broadly is a dumbed-down version of the "real thing," or a collection of catchphrases and synth presets. The sharpest avant-gardists, of course, realize that the real musical vanguard very often enters the culture via Hot 97: If a song is designed to give pleasure, a dose of shocking newness can be the element that helps demand it be played over and over. The high point of Bitte Orca lovingly appropriates the great innovations that have descended from the top of the charts over this past decade--the sharply defined negative space, holographic hooks, chiseled phrasing, and Olympically luxurious vocal arrangements of Amerie, Aaliyah, and Destiny's Child. Its lyric is partly pop readymades ("From now until forever baby/ I can't imagine anything better"), partly lines from Peter Handke's "Song of Childhood" in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire ("Like a child it had no habits/ No opinion about anything"), and in the context of its spiraling melody and arrangement, they seem like they've always belonged together. And Amber Coffman's lead vocal is a phenomenon: acrobatic, locked into the rhythmic demands of the song, and delivered in a way that makes her voice's thin, conversational tone radiant. --Douglas Wolk

1. Animal Collective

"My Girls"

[Domino]

"My Girls", the catchy, gloriously harmonized highlight of Merriweather Post Pavilion, is all heart-- arguably the most earnest expression of basic human want recorded in 2009. Panda Bear's promise to provide a proper house for his wife and young daughter, in the wake of his father's death-- "But to provide for mine who ask, I will, with heart, on my father's grave," he pledges-- yielded a blissful, near-ecstatic song that practically requires participation, be it hollering along (try to keep yourself from yelling a synchronized "ooooh!" after the chorus) or shimmying in your subway seat. Panda Bear and Avey Tare's harmonies here are warmer (and groovier) than most anywhere else in the band's catalogue, and the electronics are gentle and buoyant; in some ways, "My Girls" feels like a life preserver for people tottering on the precipice of adulthood. Panda Bear might be apologetic about his craving ("I don't mean to seem like I care about material things," he hedges), but "My Girls" is ultimately a celebration of the simplification-- of desire, of priorities-- that comes with growing up. --Amanda Petrusich