Top 10 Lists
10 Last-Minute Picks for CMJ 2011
Searching for CMJ bands building late buzz? Try: Chad Valley, Co La, North Highlands...
Top 20 Indie Record Labels
The greatest ever indie record labels.
Iron and Wine 'Ghost on Ghost'
With swelling soul music strings and boisterous horns, the jazzy 'Ghost on Ghost' is Iron and Wine's most audience-friendly, festival-ready record. But has the hushed beauty of Sam Beam been lost?
10 Killer Under-the-Radar 2011 LPs
Ten awesome albums that were overlooked by the blogosphere in 2011.
10 Awesome SXSW 2013 Shows
Amongst the chaos and carnage of SXSW, here's ten shows to head to.
10 Bands to Watch at Coachella 2013
If you're baking in the desert at Coachella, here are 10 acts --from The Evens to Thee Oh Sees, with the Postal Service in between-- to help keep you cool.
10 Last-Minute Picks for SXSW 2013
With the entire indie world descending on Texas for SXSW, here's 10 bands who come bearing buzz.
10 Most Anticipated Albums of 2013
2012 was the year the world was supposed to come to an end. 2013 is the year that The Avalanches and My Bloody Valentine are supposed to put out new records.
20 Overlooked, Underrated and Under-the-Radar 2012 Albums
In 2012, these awesome albums flew under the radar and fell between the cracks.
10 Bands to Watch in 2013
Here's a rundown of a run of bands bound for big things in lucky '13.
10 International Acts to Watch at SXSW 2013
From the manifold foreign acts descending on Austin, here's ten bands to watch for.
10 Most Disappointing Albums of 2012
Not every album manages to justify hype or fulfill great expectations. From Best Coast to Scott Walker, here's ten acts whose 2012 output failed to live up to past accomplishments.
10 Bands to Watch at SXSW 2013
Thousands of bands will be vying for the blogosphere's attention in Austin. Here's ten that are likely to drum up some buzz.
10 Last-Minute Picks for CMJ 2012
From Diana to Eraas, Mean Lady to Starred, here's ten bands building late CMJ buzz.
10 Iconic Album Covers
A collection of album covers that are just as iconic as the music within.
10 International Bands to Watch at CMJ 2012
Thousands of acts are voyaging to New York for CMJ. From Chad Valley to Savages, here's ten of the best.
Top 30 Albums of 2009
There were so many amazing LPs issued in '09 that a Top 20 just couldn't contain them.
Top 10 Breakout Bands of 2012
From Fidlar to The Men, Diiv to Grimes, these bands found their fortunes on the rise in 2012.
10 Bands to Watch at Coachella 2012
To all those suffering in the sun at Coachella: here are ten acts you don't want to miss.
10 Most Anticipated Albums of 2012
Will The Avalanches, Cat Power, The Knife, and Mazzy Star all really release new LPs in 2012?
10 Bands to Watch at CMJ 2012
Every year, the CMJ Music Marathon births a batch of buzz bands. Moon King, IO Echo, and Mac DeMarco headline this year's contenders.
Top 10 Breakout Bands of 2011
In 2011, these ten bands found their fortunes rising fast.
2011: Indie Music's Year of the Saxophone
If your LP didn't have a sax solo in it, you didn't belong on 2011's best-of lists.
Top 20 Albums of 2008
Let's count 'em down: the very best alternative and/or indie records of the year. Old favorites, new loves, strange surprises, unexpected treasures. The essential picks of the '08.
10 Most Overrated Albums of 2011
From Girls to Washed Out, here's ten wildly overpraised albums that got way too much love in 2011.
Top 20 Vincent Moon Videos
Vincent Moon's 'Take Away Shows' revolutionized live music video. Here are the highlights of his inspired, improvised work.
Top 10 Albums of 2010 So Far
Ahhhh, album of the year lists. Our eternal salvation. Who doesn't love a good meticulous ranking, taking a wild and unwieldy tangle of history and whipping it into numerated order? It's an act akin to playing God: making order out of chaos. And, in an era utterly overrun by an astonishing, neverending influx of new music, these lists have...
10 International Acts to Watch at SXSW 2012
Bands flock to SXSW from all over the globe; here's ten awesome ones from Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Australia, England, Sweden...
10 Acts to Watch in 2012
From Bleached to U.S. Girls, ten bands primed for a 2012 breakout.
10 Trailblazing Female Musicians
Tired of tepid 'women in rock' lists? Here's ten fiery heroines that blazed radical new musical trails.
Top 10 Most Influential Figures in Alternative Music History
From studio perfectionists to singular idealists, with a host of rockbands in between, here's ten figures of infinite influence.
Top 10 Classic Indie-Rock Records
Given the climate of reissues and reformations, it's no longer ironic to call these records 'classic indie-rock.'
Top 10 Lo-Fi Albums
In the 1980s, the British Phonographic Industry launched a short-sighted, essentially silly campaign against the supposed 'piracy' of music enthusiasts taping LPs onto cassettes for friends. The catchy slogan was "Home Taping Is Killing Music". Nearly 30 years on, and it's clear that home-taping revolutionized music. Not simply in the sharing...
Top 40 Canadian Albums of the 2000s
Before the '00s, Canadian music was, outside of its shores, treated with a critical derision that served as the musical equivalent of "eh?" jokes; the mocking mention of Rush and/or Alanis Morrissette seemingly obligatory. But, beginning with the flowering of Montreal's Constellation scene in the late-'90s, things began to change. And, by the...
10 Best Indie Bands to Follow on Twitter
The most entertaining indie-rock Tweeters.
Top 100 Albums of the 2000s
Given the debate-starting nature of list-making and the angry emails I already feel looming, let's lay this out. The Rules: 1) Strictly only one album per band . Otherwise there'd be like eight Animal Collective albums in here. 2) Popularity isn't everything. If you think album sales = artistic worth, I have one word for you: Creed. 3) ...
Top 10 Indie Music Documentaries
Ranging from portraits of cult heroes (Roky Erickson) and global icons (Radiohead), here are the greatest music documentaries of all-time.
10 Last-Minute Picks for SXSW 2011
We're taking it down to the wire. With SXSW imminent, here's ten bands making a late case for can't-miss status.
Top 20 Matador Albums
Few record-labels have had an ongoing, unbroken run of pop-cultural credibility like Matador Records. The New Yorker label, in its 20 years on the job, has released an embarrassment of recorded riches. Hitching their wagon, early, to Stephen Malkmus's star, Matador has found much good fortune; not least of all when they stumbled upon one Chan...
10 Acts to Watch at CMJ 2010
September 28, 2010
From October 19-23, the CMJ Music Marathon will hijack New York City's live venues for the 31st time. Though it's not as...
Top 10 Math-Rock Albums
Tally your time-signatures! A guide to the essential, indispensable math-rock records.
Top 10 Sub Pop Albums
Though it'll be forever associated with grunge, Seattle's legendary Sub Pop Records has reinvented itself in the new millennium, presiding over an eclectic lineup of increasingly-successful acts. Here're 10 picks from the label's first 20 years.
Top 30 4AD Albums
The best 30 albums from the first 30 years of the all-conquering indie powerhouse.
10 Awesome SXSW 2011 Showcases
Feeling lost amidst SXSW's barrage of live music? Here's ten shows that stand out from the crowd.
10 Entertaining Interviews from the About.com Vaults
Quotable notables, amusing anecdotes, public repudiations, and choice chit-chat. Here's ten killer conversations with indie royalty.
10 Biblical Indie Albums
Call them anti-Christian-Rock records: 10 mighty albums rich in religious theme and biblical heft.
Top 10 Post-Rock Albums
Post-rock progressed in a manner reminiscent of many genres: an adventurous spirit shared by a handful of disparate acts eventually growing into a specific sound rife with rules. Amongst all the rec-room crews of quiet-to-loud dudes too scared to sing, there were, however, lots of genuine renegades reworking rock'n'roll's familiar forms; lots of...
Top 10 Thrill Jockey Albums
Chicago's Thrill Jockey Records made its name in the mid-'90s, when post-rock reigned and indie dweebs the world over regarded Chicago as some sort of musical mecca. As the years went on, and Trans Am records grew worse and Tortoise records grew further apart, the label reinvented itself on the fly; widening its borders outside its Windy City...
Top 20 Albums of 2012 So Far
A countdown of the best LPs to grace our ears in 2012.
Top 20 Albums of 2013 So Far
With the long-awaited returns for The Knife and My Bloody Valentine, 2013 delivered great records early.
Top 10 K Records Albums
10 all-time great albums on the ultimate underground indie label.
Top 10 Riot-Grrrl Records
Long before the internet made making connections easy, the riot-grrrl movement was an astonishing web of grassroots networking. Initially growing out of a community of like-minded women authoring feminist fanzines, riot-grrrl marked the moment in which these polemicists put down their pens and picked up guitars. Drawing from punk's original...
10 Bands to Watch at Coachella 2011
Battling the desert heat at Coachella? Here's ten picks to click at the 2011 fest...
Top 10 Slowcore Albums
In the 1990s, faced with the torrential onslaught of grunge and the increasingly-abrasive ways of alternative music, a rare handful of artists started to challenge the prevailing rockist mentality. Eventually, these lonesome satellites bands like Codeine, Red House Painters, and Low would be grouped in, together, as slowcore . Membership in...
20 Best New Bands of 2011
There've been countless bands who've debuted in 2011. Here's the 20 best brand new acts.
Top 20 Alternative Christmas Records
Here's how humbug hipsters stuck at family gatherings can commandeer the stereo and not upset the seasonal apple-cart.
30 Best New Bands of 2012 So Far
From amongst the many new musical arrivals in 2012, these acts --like Bleached, Diana, Diiv, Teen, Tops, Trust-- have stood out.
Top 10 Bands Who'll Never Reform
Feeling reunion tour fatigue? Here's ten bands that will never get back together.
10 International Bands to Watch at SXSW 2011
Bands come to Austin from all over the world. Here are 10 awesome SXSW 2011 outfits from far-flung shores.
Top 20 Drag City Albums
If I had to pick a favorite label, it'd be Drag City. From the eternally-awesome Chicago imprint's classic catalog, here's 20 albums to stand in awe of.
10 Obscure Albums That Became Classics
Wildly unpopular in their day, these 'lost' LPs would go, years later, grow to become hugely influential indie albums.
Top 10 Broadcast Songs
The late Trish Keenan presided over a run of spooky, haunted, beautiful beatnik pop and evocative collage.
Factory Records' 10 Greatest Catalogue Items
From Joy Divison to New Order, notepaper to coffins, Factory Records catalogued everything they touched in a legendary discography.
10 Awesome SXSW 2012 Shows
For those about to be overwhelmed in Austin: here's ten killer shows to circle.
10 Last-Minute Picks for SXSW 2012
Ten trending acts who've drummed up some last-minute buzz on the way to Austin.
Top 10 Starter Alternative Albums
No self-respecting alternative-minded record-collection should be without these unique, unusual, underground albums. Though they haven't sold half-as-many copies, combined, as Bat Out Of Hell, these records have influenced more bands than could possibly be tallied; their individuality and creativity like a lightning-rod for inspiration. Many may not have been hailed in their day, but time …
Top 50 Albums of 2011
The very best record released in 2011.
Top 10 Breakout Bands of 2010
In an internet-centric age, the annual parade of breakout bands has become a yearly tradition; a veritable rite of this blogospheric era. With online word-of-mouth now a swift, catalyzing force, indie acts can go from utterly unknown to hype-blasted within the blink of an eye. Some of 2010's breakout stars went from no one to someone in an...
I was going to call this countdown 'Top 10 Conor Oberst' songs, until I realized that none of Oberst's recent non-Bright-Eyes tunes —in his lazy, dude-wrangling goof-off Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, and in the alt-rock-celebrity supergroup Monsters of Folk— are worthy of a spot amongst the songsmith's best work.
10 Acts to Watch in 2011
December 14, 2010
With the crazy pace of the digital music era the lightning-fast cycles of blog hype, the new musical movements that catalyze in just a matter of months, the home recording projects with two songs to their name who suddenly become overnight next-big-things it's getting harder to predict those about to blow up big. But,...
10 Most Disappointing Albums of 2010 - Top 10 Indie Music LP Letdowns from 2010
Disappointment is a funny thing to quantify. What it really speaks of, in a music-listening sense, is expectation. All of the below have, at one point in their career, if not achieved greatness, at least threatened it. All of the below have delivered albums amazing, acclaimed, beloved, or all of the above. But this year, in 2010... not so much....
10 Bands to Watch at CMJ 2011
Blue Hawaii, EMA, Forest Fire, Purity Ring, Weekend and more: the picks of 2011's CMJ Music Marathon.
10 (More) Bands to Watch at CMJ 2011
d'Eon and Grimes, Exitmusic, Gross Magic, Holiday Shores, Memoryhouse, Painted Palms, Still Corners, Widowspeak, Wild Flag, Young Magic.
10 Infamous Concerts
When people list infamous concert experiences, there's a tendency to fall back on Baby Boomer lore. Who hasn't heard about Dylan going electric...
Top 30 Albums of the 1960s
In 1960, The Beatles were naff skiffle-beat teens; by 1970, they'd overseen a revolution. In a decade, rock'n'roll had exploded into a global phenomenon; become an artform of genuine expression and experimentation. Whilst The Beatles were superstars, the time was just as fertile for underground counter-culture. The seeds of alternative music...
10 Infamous Concerts
When people list infamous concert experiences, there's a tendency to fall back on Baby Boomer lore. Who hasn't heard about Dylan going electric (the crowd literally cried "Judas!"), Jim Morrison getting arrested on stage in New Haven, or the Rolling Stones employing the Hell's Angels as body-guards at Altamont? But to suggest that infamy ended...
Top 10 Krautrock Albums
West Germany in the 1970s was a fertile time for progressive, mind-altering music. A host of young renegades, out to author a new German free from the specter of the past, forged deep into psychedelic, experimental, and electronic sound. When these astonishing output of albums arrived on English shores, it was dubbed krautrock , but this was no genre based around a singular sound. From psychedeli…
Top 10 Post-Punk Albums
Simon Reynolds' historical tome Rip it Up and Start Again: Post-Punk 1978-1984 challenged a long-held cultural presumption: that the UK punk explosion of '77 was underground English music's watershed moment, and that, when Sid Vicious started on the gear, everything went downhill. This idea so often delivered with a sense of inescapable...
10 Infamous Concerts
When people list infamous concert experiences, there's a tendency to fall back on Baby Boomer lore. Who hasn't heard about Dylan going electric (the crowd literally cried "Judas!"), Jim Morrison getting arrested on stage in New Haven, or the Rolling Stones employing the Hell's Angels as body-guards at Altamont? But to suggest that infamy ended...
10 Great 2010 Debut Albums
For devoted music fans, the thrill of the chase scouring blogs, listening to online streams, buying albums by unknown acts is the endless pursuit of the new. That next new band that's going to blow your mind, win your heart, or soundtrack your days. Every year, thousands upon thousands of artists arrive as new bands, and issue their first...
10 Killer Under-the-Radar LPs from 2010 - Best Obscure Alternative Albums...
Even in the blogosphere era, amazing albums still come out and slip through the cracks. With the sheer, unimaginable volume of music being released far outnumbering the seemingly-innumerable music blogs out there, not every record is going to be met with the kind of clamor and acclaim that they deserve (or, y'know, don't , depending). In...
10 Bands to Watch at Lollapalooza 2012
Beneath the rock behemoths atop the bill, here's ten lesser-known but more interesting names in the Lollapalooza line-up.
Top 10 Shoegaze Albums - Greatest Shoegaze Records of All Time
Born in the UK in the late-'80s, shoegaze was a movement that used incredibly loud electric guitars to make something that had little connection to traditional rock'n'roll. Using a host of effects pedals delay and flange, chiefly and abusing tremolo bars, shoegaze guitars stripped away the attack of their instrument; building layers upon...
10 Bands to Watch at SXSW 2012
Trying to work out who to watch amidst the masses in Austin? Here's ten picks to not miss.