Despite J. Tillman's creative proclivity (both as a one-time member of Fleet Foxes, and as a solo artist) over the past decade, it took a fake name for him to hit it big. "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings" is a disarmingly catchy ballad hewn from decades of downcast Laurel Canyon rock and dressed up in the finest imitation-Parsons jacket a Sub Pop advance could buy; it views the world through the conflictory lenses of libido and loss, sobriety and drug binges. At its core, it's an elegy for a love tainted by the reaper's touch. "Someone's gotta help me dig," Tillman moans to his lady, but is he referring to his deceased relative or someone—or something—further into the void, just beyond his grasp? Heard next to the clattering backbeat, it's that very barfly philosophizing that makes this Fear Fun cut so lovable. —Zoe Camp

Father John Misty: "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings" (via SoundCloud)

In early 2010, the producer Hans-Peter Lindstrøm took a break from disco to release a low-lit electro-pop album with the Norwegian-Mauritian singer Isabelle Sandoo. I say Sandoo is a singer, but what she does is more like pillow talk set to a beat, which she follows with the casual interest of a cat batting at a toy. She sighs, she feints, she commands attention with little to no effort at all—an approach that reaches back through a history of pilled-out disco divas all the way to the torch singers of the ‘50s, who managed the uncanny trick of making cold feel hot. “Are you gonna be there?” she wheezes on “Lovesick”—“are you sure you’re gonna call back?” Grammatically, it’s a question, but it doesn’t sound like she cares much about the answer. —Mike Powell

Lindstrøm & Christabelle: "Lovesick"

Rap purists hate Migos. Haaaate them. From the jump, the "empirical lyrical miracle" crowd have taken this young Atlanta trio—who've adopted Gucci Mane as their God MC and spit triplets about Norbit and Takis instead of, I dunno, their Adidas—as the three brand-loyal horsemen of the rap apocalypse. But when's the last time anybody in the backpacker crowd coughed up a hook as indelible as "Versace", these dudes' brain-sticking tribute to Gianni and them? Or snuck quite so many internal rhymes into a verse without leeching all the joy out of it? The impossibly catchy, sneakily hilarious "Versace" always reminds me of a lesson from another Southern spitter, once reviled, now revered: "If we too simple, then y'all don't get the basics." —Paul Thompson

Migos: "Versace"

Despite her sing-song vocal patterns, Megan James' lyrics focus on darker, harsher subject matter than you might expect. Take "Fineshrine", a song about loving someone so much you want to disappear into their guts: "Get a little closer, let fold/ Cut open my sternum, and pull/ My little ribs around you/ The rungs of me be under, under you." When you pair words like that with Corin Roddick's ebullient, gently dark instrumentation, it's part Grimms' fairy tale, part moving meditation on never being close enough, of not being able to save someone when it's their time to disappear. —Brandon Stosuy

Purity Ring: "Fineshrine" (via SoundCloud)

The Men—aka NYC’s most inscrutable band—are currently five albums deep into a career that has zigzagged between scorched-earth punk rock to cacophonous hardcore guitar squalls a la Sonic Youth to jangly folk vibes and Grand Funk-style American classic rock (sometimes all on the same record). “Bataille”—from the band’s 2011 album Leave Home—is a blast of exquisitely blown out r-a-w-k that inexplicably takes its name from that of a famous French intellectual. Despite an opening riff that could almost trick you into thinking you were about to hear a druggier version of Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades”—and the fact that the song sounds as if it might have been recorded inside an echo-filled cave lined with steel—“Bataille” is a kind of glorious post-punk explosion that manages to cram about 50 different musical ideas into four short screamy minutes. At a time when the Men were at their most wonderfully schizophrenic, “Bataille” manages to harness all of the band's conflicting ambitions—doom, drone, punk, pop, and abject noise—and squeeze them into one track. It’s totally possible to listen to this song a thousand or so times and never really make out a single clear vocal, but it hardly matters. “Bataille” isn’t about words; it’s all about pure release. —T. Cole Rachel

The Men: "Bataille" (via SoundCloud)

“Only Girl (In the World)” represents the pinnacle of bright red-haired, Loud-era Rihanna—brassy, carefree, sexual, and maybe just a little bit selfish—complete with club-thumping production from hitmakers Stargate and a pitch-perfect extended selfie of a video (which, for what it’s worth, premiered one week after the initial release of Instagram). Coming from someone like Katy Perry or Beyoncé, the demand to “make me feel like I’m the only girl in the world” would have felt coy, maybe even inappropriate. But from Rihanna, whose career at the time was plagued with accusations of raunchiness and exhibitionism, it sounds like an honest request. As a career-defining single for a pop starlet, “Only Girl” is perfect because it’s grounded in the idea that egomania can be orgasmic. The video’s wish-fulfillment quality only adds thrust to the rush of empowerment: If the song demands fireworks, give the woman fireworks! How could you deny her? —Abby Garnett

Rihanna: "Only Girl (In the World)"

Something of a locus for the turn towards house (and away from dubstep) that UK dance music underwent around the turn of the decade, "Getting Me Down" had been lighting up dancefloors almost a year before it was officially released. But even that couldn't soften its landing when it finally hit like a meteor strike in 2011. The R&B edit to end all R&B edits, "Getting Me Down" took an overused Brandy vocal and gave it a giddy, hopped-up backing track, full of the growling basslines and sledgehammer percussion that would come to define the much harder techno material Blawan would produce later. It’s now an outlier in the catalog of one of this decade’s most uncompromising techno producers, but then how could it not be—"Getting Me Down" would stand out in any context you put it in. —Andrew Ryce

Blawan: "Getting Me Down"

Eventually, Jay Electronica will release a full-length album. It's difficult to say what level of interest or excitement will attend it—truly powerful, charismatic artists tend to have the ability to organize the pop-culture narrative around their movements, however erratic or infrequent. Jay Electronica, however, seems bent on riding this theory all the way out—the news feed for his career in the last three years resembles a basement refrigerator containing only baking soda. It may create a capital-M moment, or it might drop uselessly like a pod from a rotted tree.

What is certain, however, is that it will happen safely outside the corona of excitement and possibility that surrounded the release of "Exhibit C", released in final days of 2009. That moment arrived perfect and already preserved in amber--as Just Blaze, keeper of the East Coast flame, pushed a Billy Stewart sample beneath a filter, Jay Electronica told the most coherent and compelling story he's ever bothered with, painting a vision of himself as homeless, sleeping in the rain, fighting off hunger pangs, receiving visitations from angels. The irony, of course, is that despite all the agonizing waiting, he knocked the song out in 15 minutes. —Jayson Greene

Jay Electronica: "Exhibit C"

The British producer Addison Groove—Antony Williams, better known as the dubstep artist Headhunter—discovered Chicago juke and footwork the way most non-Chicagoans did back in the late '00s: by watching videos of dancers on YouTube. He made "Footcrab" as a way of folding juke tracks into his own DJ sets; the song is paced according to dubstep's conventional tempo, but the stuttering vocal loops and syncopated toms are more in keeping with footwork's hyperkinetic flutter. While "Footcrab" isn't really a footwork track, it helped whet European palates for the form, hitting shelves shortly before Planet Mu brought out actual footwork records from DJ Nate and DJ Rashad, and finding its way into the boxes of DJs from Ricardo Villalobos to Mr. Scruff; a B-side remix from DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn, meanwhile, closed the circle. —Philip Sherburne

Addison Groove: "Footcrab"

Chvrches achieved maximum likability with "The Mother We Share", and you can prove it with the following: "likable" became the desperate, last line of defense for people trying to find reasons to dislike it. They'd have a point if Chvrches were really trying to be an indie rock band, but the Scottish trio are done with that part of their lives; two of the members did stints in miserablist post-rock bands while Lauren Mayberry has the double indignity of a law degree and a failed career in music journalism. After years of trying to appeal to various groups of stock-still, grimacing dudes, Chvrches crowd-please with equal and opposite force with a single so brilliant and on-target, they put a damn neon bullseye on the album cover. 

The original version was good, the one on The Bones of What You Believe was a charm offensive, an already-sharp song given diamond-cutting production. So there's nothing "edgy" about the lazer-guided melodies, bombastic synth-drums, and heat-seeking timeliness: it's ca. 2013 electro-pop performed like rock, while Mayberry's sisterly cadence turns her vague lyrics into something familiar and comforting, dropping an f-bomb in the perfect place, so you could fool yourself into thinking this was indie rock rather than pop made by former indie rockers. As we speak, major labels are blowing a lot of money in search of bands who can sound anything like this and Chvrches nailed it on the first try in their basement. If you have to dislike "The Mother We Share" for any reason, make it that. —Ian Cohen

Chvrches: "The Mother We Share" (via SoundCloud)

Ty Segall is capable of writing more good songs in one year than many of his peers manage in an entire decade. In 2012, he let loose with three full-length albums while fidgeting with a variety of genres (psych-folk? garage-glam?). But it was Slaughterhouse—the only one recorded under the moniker of “band”—that showed Segall’s true prowess when it comes to fusing fury with melody. “I Bought My Eyes” is four minutes of stoner rock euphoria—a track that builds from a simple guitar line into a boiling fuzzed out monster of Stooges-worthy riffs and Neanderthal drums. In a perfect fantasy scenario, this is the song you’d be blasting if you found yourself driving a flaming Trans Am as it zoomed skyward off the side of a cliff. At a time when the very term “garage rock” has become nearly meaningless (or, in many cases, a total pejorative), Ty Segall’s messy and masterful take on the genre kicks every conceivable kind of ass, making goofy songs filled with breakneck guitar lines, hooks seeming made for hair-tossing, and lots of “ooh ooh oohs” sound like the best and most necessary thing in the world. —T. Cole Rachel

Ty Segall Band: "I Bought My Eyes"

If she's too simple, her detractors don't get the basics. Yes, it's a song about how when Bethany Cosentino's narrator is with someone, she has fun. Yes, it's one of at least three Best Coast songs that rhyme "lazy" with "crazy," a statistic that seems both lazy and crazy. But Cosentino and bandmate Bobb Bruno's success in capturing the lazy, the crazy, and especially the fun, fun, fun of new love's dumbstruck swoon is what helped them survive chillwave's 2009 beach-bum deadbeat summer. Southern California's proudest indie ambassadors have kept maturing and thriving, but they've never made a better postcard for paradise than this bit of surf-flecked fuzz-pop. And anyway, it was at least two-dimensional all along: When Cosentino howls that "I hate sleeping alone," she lays bare the loneliness that makes the rest of the track's joy so much sweeter. When it's playing, which isn't often enough considering this single isn't even on the vinyl edition of 2010's Crazy for You, I have fun. Don't we all hate sleeping alone? —Marc Hogan

Best Coast: "When I'm With You"

Following an indie-R&B trend of dank themes and abstract sonics, a once-anonymous L.A. duo countered with minimal soul music of delectable sweetness and immaculate clarity. On a record done up in the plush upholstery of '80s soft rock and smooth jazz, the acoustic disco of “The Fall” stands out, as Robin Hannibal spins a glittering web of strings, horns, and pattering snares. Against its forward motion, serene piano chords softly pound at the backs of the bars, lingering as if trying to freeze time, like romance does. The lyrics are similarly caught between propulsion and drag, alternately addressing a lover who is about to leave and one who has gone. Milosh’s creamy contralto has equivocal zones of temperature, often so hot or cold you can’t tell which. His voice sounds feminine less because it’s high than because it’s soft, cleansed of aggressive effects. Though sultry, the song feels refreshingly virtuous, even chaste. Behind Rhye’s temporary anonymity was something so ordinary that, weighed against the twisted drives of the Weeknd, it felt rare: a gentle guy singing to his wife. —Brian Howe

Rhye: "The Fall" (via SoundCloud)

Throughout the Big Music boom of the early part of the decade, no voice boomed bigger than Florence Welch’s. That five-alarm howl would go on to propel her to dizzying heights of dancefloor domination and Hollywood glamour, but nowhere did Welch sound more gloriously skyscraping, more monumentally huge, than on “Shake It Out”. This song is release, an embodiment of the ultimate in pop catharsis. Lyrics about casting off the devils of the past, blown heavenward by church organ and a backing choir (featuring a then-unknown Jessie Ware). A chorus that feels like coming up for air after nearly drowning. A 10-second-long, sinus-clearing high note. “Shake It Out” is truly one of the great sonic exhales of this decade. —Amy Phillips

Florence and the Machine: "Shake It Out"

An American Warped Tour upstart adopts a burbling dance underground and drags it screaming into the mainstream. Derided and championed with colorful analogies typically involving dial-up modems and Autobot intimacy, Skrillex's take on dubstep lit a match under the feet of young folks hunting for ever more aggressive sounds and infuriated purists with its redline perversion. Without "Scary Monsters" tracks like Taylor Swift's "I Knew You Were Trouble", Britney's "Hold It Against Me", and even Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's "Invader Invader" would sound radically different. Bass drops and wobbles have become another de rigueur influence on pop music along with EDM at large, and while those sounds might have found such a prominent spot in the Top 40 eventually, the jarring, alien ferocity of "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" gave them a shove. —Jake Cleland

Skrillex: "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites"

The tracklist of Bon Iver's second LP is equally split amongst real places, specific landmarks, and real-sounding places that Justin Vernon made up. Fitting that its opener entirely conflates the physical and imaginary aspects of a geographical location: there's Perth, Australia, "the most remote city on Earth", and "Perth", which presents it as the literal edge of civilization. A heraldic, ascending introductory reverie, the clatter of field snares, an avalanche of muddy, gritty distortion triggering resounding tremors of double kick drums—these all feel like echoes from a violent and costly military strike, as reverb surveys the eerie detente like a hovering cloud of gunsmoke and last breaths. But what exactly happened in "Perth"? Tough to say, as with most songs on Bon Iver, memory is incapacitated by both photographic recall and total blank spots. Perhaps "Perth" is just the rummy, revisionist war story of Justin Vernon laying waste to the Myth of Bon Iver; convincing himself he actually went out to that cabin in the woods because he could convalesce by making as much noise as he wants. —Ian Cohen

Bon Iver: "Perth"

There comes a time in a rock singer's life when the dream is just not what you thought it was going to be. The cyclical nature of touring grows tiring; planes lose their romance; and weed, somehow, is no longer a vehicle to cerebral possibility. The jokers in Parquet Courts have killed their best song, "Stoned and Starving"—a flawless go at smoked-out guitar squall and droning New York street poetry. Or they have, at least, retired it. "I was reading ingredients/ Asking myself should I eat this," Andrew Savage spoke-sang, rejecting the status quo with subtlety and humor. The song captures the essence of Parquet Courts, a breed of intellectual slackerdom that is all too rare nowadays. Less than two years since it entered our collective consciousness, "Stoned and Starving" is already a myth. Thurston must be proud. —Jenn Pelly

Parquet Courts: "Stoned and Starving" (via SoundCloud)

When Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew sing “Lose no more time resisting the flow”—softly repeating the latter half in delicate, three-part harmony—they’re giving us an unscientific but wholly valid life lesson: Things fall apart, so don’t waste your time kicking against the goads. “Sometimes the bad guys come out on top; sometimes the good guys lose,” they sing. People change. People die. Cry, but don’t lose your mind. “Ohm” conveys musically exactly what’s being instructed lyrically. The annular guitar and hypnotic chanting offers a fugue state—a way to find that flow and ride it for seven minutes. At the same time, the song’s own beauty and brilliance is the flip side of the coin, because Yo La Tengo are the good guys. And it’s comforting to know that sometimes the good guys win. —Joel Oliphint

Yo La Tengo: "Ohm"

Vincent Belorgey is a Parisian producer whose career output has gravitated to a specific story, an alter-ego soundtrack for something that only exists in the orbit of his serrated, intense electro-house. But his own mise en scene, a blurry neo-noir/VHS slasher flick pastiche of post-mortem restlessness and gleaming sports cars, could still thrive when grafted to somebody else's vision. And whatever separates the undead-in-a-Ferrari backstory of Kavinsky from Ryan Gosling's enigmatically violent wheelman in Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive is overcome by mutual influence. A sleepwalking dirge compared to the uptempo precedent set by earlier cuts like "Testarossa Autodrive" and "Wayfarer", "Nightcall" lives and dies (and un-lives) by its tension—and not just the tension of the music's gothic synthpop, like a Depeche Mode 45 flipped down to 33 ⅓. It's really in the exchange between Kavinsky's robotic wraith of a voice, promising unnerving revelations on the border of rekindled romance and transformative horror, and Lovefoxxx's ambivalence, a confused longing that knows she's talking to a phantom but doesn't entirely believe it. —Nate Patrin

Kavinsky: "Nightcall" [ft. Lovefoxxx]

Status and opulence have always been a virtue in hip-hop. “There He Go”, making incredible use of a Menomena sample, illustrates what success looks like during the initial come-up. Q doesn’t have bodyguards with him just yet when he takes a trip to the mall, but when he gets there, people recognize him. (“They be like ‘there he go!’”) He might not be famous enough to have his CD stocked in the FYE just yet, but he’s still got money. (“Got my daughter swaggin’ like her mothafuckin’ daddy, though!”) He lives in a house with a patio. (“What a motherfuckin’ view.”) Oh, and obviously, he has tons of sex. It’s a song by a man who isn’t quite acquainted with A-list decadence, but with his wild-eyed delivery, you can tell he’s loving this, and you’d love it, too. —Evan Minsker

Schoolboy Q: "There He Go"