Pitchfork

20: The Juan MacLean
"Happy House"
[DFA]






"I think aggression in music is the domain of really young people," Juan Maclean said in an interview earlier this year. He demonstrated an alternate way for older, more centered artists to display their power with this 12 and a half minute bliss-bomb. It's everything good about the DFA collective in one place, a track that sinks its roots deep into the history of dance music (the relentless piano riff that serves as its spine is jacked from Dubtribe Sound System's "Do It Now" by way of every Chicago house record of the 1980s, not to mention "Din Daa Daa") and extends in numerous directions at once. "Thank you for just being so damn excellent," Nancy Whang declares, and she sings it like that's precisely what she means. "Happy House" is an in-your-face song, but it melts into your face. --Douglas Wolk

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19: Vivian Girls
"Where Do You Run To"
[Mauled by Tigers/In the Red]






Vivian Girls appropriated an oft-referenced outsider-art touchstone for their band name, and nicked numerous well-worn tricks from your favorite lo-fi Phil Spector acolytes-- the cavernous reverb, the extra percussion, the rough-and-tumble harmonies-- for their first full-length. But possession is nine-tenths of the law, and when "Where Do You Run To" reaches the chorus, and the song's rumbling thunder starts sucking face with the girls' intermingled voices, it becomes pretty clear that these ladies are taking what's not necessarily theirs, and making it their own. --David Raposa

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18: Women
"Black Rice"
[Jagjaguwar]






Once you fight off the initial knee-jerk urge to toss this psych ditty onto the blog-rock scrap heap, you'll find "Black Rice" rewards more with each listen. That's because these roughshod Albertans are actually closet post-punk deconstructionists who happen to have a killer knack for citric hooks. A minimalist Wire-esque riff and fussy stop-start sections temper the saccharine vibes, though it doesn't hurt when drowsy singer Patrick Fiegel rolls off the couch to deliver a stunningly euphoric chorus. The result is a lo-fi pop gem that's (fortunately) too lethargic and stand-offish to exploit the many indie trends it alludes to. --Adam Moerder

MP3:> Women: "Black Rice"

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17: Wiley
"Wearing My Rolex"
[Asylum]






"Here's my number-- she already knows it": Wiley's MC persona is often an icy, defensive control freak, so no surprise that his pop breakthrough is about the horror of losing that control. He's in a club, drunk, short-term memory starting to go: What's he been doing? Why is everything repeating itself? Who has he just given his tremendously expensive watch to? The music, built on a sample of DSK's house classic "What Would We Do?", is a tight electro loop, keyboards arcing woozily upward, perfectly capturing a night out on the brink of disintegration. "Rolex" birthed a dance craze, an answer record (Mz Bratt's "Wearing His Rolex"), and gave Wiley a top 3 UK hit, but beyond the novelty it's his befuddled paranoia that makes it so memorable. --Tom Ewing

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16: The Mae Shi
"Run to Your Grave"
[Moshi Moshi/Team Shi]






The Mae Shi lost their singer and their label in 2006, but instead of being defeated, these apostles of good vibes and distorted electronics attacked 2008 with a rapturous self-released collection that celebrates life, god, and the joy of buzzing synthesizers. And with "Run to Your Grave", HLLLYH's blissful climax, they manage to alchemize all of their arty experimentalism into a blatantly ecstatic anthem, complete with an addictively chanted chorus, bright, videogame-worthy keyboard bleeps, and revival-tent handclaps. Despite ingredients that in lesser hands could be grating-- spazzy nasal shout-singing, preachy lyrics about abandoning worldly possessions to give into spirituality, and a repetitive melody-- the Mae Shi crafted a winning pop gem of exultant abandon. --Rebecca Raber

MP3:> The Mae Shi: "Run to Your Grave"

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15: Amadou and Mariam
"Sabali"
[Because]






At once futuristic and crushingly nostalgic, this blind couple from Mali's first collaboration with Blur's Damon Albarn is a haunting electro-pop experiment that drips with soul. It begins with Mariam Doumbia in a conversation with gentle violins that sound beamed down from the International Space Station, the gives itself over to a synthetic rhythm and an arpeggiating keyboard. It has a lonely tinge that equally evokes Alan Shepard all alone on a suborbital flight and a lone traveler crossing the desert on a cold, starry night. It's honestly hard to pin down a song that has as many emotional currents running through it as this one, but it's truly a song for any state of mind, no matter where you are. --Joe Tangari

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14: Lil Wayne
"A Milli"
[Cash Money/Universal]






Somewhere, Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popping Corn is ruing a missed marketing opportunity. Somewhere else, Dennis Rodman has mixed feelings about his only 2008 cultural reference. Goblins are up; goons are down. Erykah Badu is excited to be repped by an MC not named Common. Big, Jay, and 2Pac are looking on, humbly satisfied. Andre 3000 wants his plaid pants back. Mike Lowry is watching Bad Boys 2 climb up Netflix queues. Gwen Stefani is remembering she's also in a band called No Doubt. People in charge of venereal disease awareness are reluctantly pleased. The almighty dollar is pining for its pre-meltdown glory days. The Bible is happy to have been mentioned in the most booming hip-hop song of the year. And Wayne? He's still rapping. Or maybe singing. --Ryan Dombal

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13: Kanye West
"Flashing Lights"
[Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam]






On Grand Theft Auto IV's Hot 97 clone, DJ Green Lantern introduces "Flashing Lights" as the song they won't stop playing even though you're sick of it. But "Flashing Lights" never really reached that level of ubiquity, possibly because of the way it nods toward Euro-club whoosh without ever quite committing to it. The strobing synths and the house-thump drums are just slightly off, and the abiding mood is one of paranoid detachment, not ecstatic release. The lyrics follow: When Kanye shows up to the club, he doesn't see pretty girls and free drinks; he sees the paparazzi (who, naturally, he hates "more than a Nazi.") He's kicking game to some girl, but he's never quite reaching her. "Flashing Lights" is a tweak on pop conventions evocative enough that its sticky bad feelings will linger on until we've all blessedly forgotten about, like, "Low". --Tom Breihan

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12: Cut Copy
"Out There on the Ice"
[Modular/Interscope]






It had been four years since Cut Copy released their debut LP, Bright Like Neon Love, but their next record almost immediately made festival crowds lose their shit. Getting from points A to B seems awfully Faustian here, but paying close attention to "Out There on the Ice" unlocks the secrets of In Ghost Colours. After so many DJ gigs, Dan Whitford figured out how to foolproof dance music for rock kids who still want to get down but have no idea about the process. When Whitford sings "you don't know what to do" during the chorus of "Out There on the Ice", it's unintentionally empathetic in this context. Besides being a gloriously glowing pop song, it's the record's most instructive one as well, coasting on a splotchy warm-up, and just to make things even more clear, DFA pipe in crowd noise once the "Blue Monday" drum hit kicks after the breakdown. And right when it seems like "Out There on the Ice" could spiral upward into infinity, it gives you a literal breather at the end as a respite…right before "Lights and Music" makes you flip out all over again. --Ian Cohen

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11: David Byrne and Brian Eno
"Strange Overtones"
[self-released]






Arriving more than 20 years after the pair's last collaboration, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today bears little of the sampler magic that haunted the bare corners of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts; instead, the pair relies on their own songcraft to fill the sonic space. And the sweetly sung "Strange Overtones" stands up with the most heartfelt composition in either's oeuvre. Advanced age makes itself apparent in both voices, but Byrne and Eno go at "Strange Overtones" like a hymn, measured and deliberate while the luminous guitar riff chugs along underneath, powering their voices like a motor. The cutest thing about "Strange Overtones" might be the fact that Byrne and Eno sing about becoming lost in the relentless digitization of the world, as if either of them could actually go out of style. --Mike Orme

MP3:> David Byrne and Brian Eno: "Strange Overtones"