The Kingdom, K1 (Arena Rock)
An odd, bombastic Portland band whose singer sounds like Fine Young Cannibals' Roland Gift on an indie-rock bender, The Kingdom has created a superpowered concept album—about a cross-country race on various vehicles, sort of—out of whole cloth. K1 is completely fashion-free, and its genre is indefinable, which makes it startlingly refreshing and wonderfully strange. —Josh Modell
Uusitalo, Tulenkantaja (Huume)
Another alter ego of the Finnish artist who moonlights as Luomo and Vladislav Delay, Uusitalo falls between the two other guises: more dance-y than dubby, and more techno-y than house-y. No matter the network associations, Tulenkantaja features some of the most intricate and interesting rhythms of the year, finding elegant splints to wrap around fractures and giving the programmer's arrow progressively more organic aim. —Andy Battaglia
Lansing-Dreiden, The Dividing Island (Kemado)
Though its grandiose sound is philosophically settled squarely in the post-post-punk era of New Romantic bands like ABC and The Human League, Dividing Island also toys with angsty new wave, dream pop, Nuggets-era psychedelia, IDM, and sonic cribs from space-rock bands like Ride. It's like the last 30 years of music on shuffle. —Sean O'Neal
Pinebender, Working Nine To Wolf (Lovitt)
With what looks to be a straight face, Pinebender refers to its music as grunge. And in a sense, Working Nine To Wolf is an attempt to reclaim the term: Buried in glacier-paced riffs and bleary, in-the-red solos, the disc bows at the altar of distorted sludge, recalling the days when Codeine seemed strangely at home on Sub Pop alongside Afghan Whigs. —Jason Heller
Josh Ritter, The Animal Years (V2)
An understated master of mood and imagery, Josh Ritter is one of the finest singer-songwriters working today, even if he's yet to find much of a following outside of Stephen King and the nation of Ireland, which has adopted the Idaho-born Ritter as one of its own. The Animal Years should have been Ritter's breakout album, fleshing out his past work with subtle atmospherics and an intensified moral conflict. —Keith Phipps
Young Widows, Settle Down City (Jade Tree)
Leave it to members of Breather Resist—a band that recast post-hardcore as a roaring, shit-smeared, mathematical mess—to take on post-punk with their new project, Young Widows. To these guys, post-punk is as much Scratch Acid as it is Public Image: Their debut rips dense snarls of dissonance into echo-dripping shreds, all strung together by one of the most gloriously cruddy bass tones ever inflicted on disc. —Jason Heller
Sam Roberts Band, Chemical City (Universal)
In Canada, Sam Roberts has collected Junos (it's like a Grammy, Yanks) and headlined the country's biggest venues. But in the States, Sam Roberts Band is a lot like Sloan, another likeable, classic-rock-loving band whose well-crafted albums have never sold well. Not that it's too late—Chemical City is begging to be discovered by those who unironically love arena rock. —Steve Hyden
Figurines, Skeleton (The Control Group)
The high nasal whine and chugging guitars resemble an alt-rock promenade that stretches from Neil Young to R.E.M. to The Flaming Lips to Built To Spill, but this Danish band's humble, hummable songs stand strongly on their own, emboldened—not cheapened—by their influences. —Noel Murray
Regina Spektor, Begin To Hope (Sire)
"Unheard" might not be the right word for Spektor, whose music keeps popping up on C.S.I., Grey's Anatomy, Veronica Mars, and elsewhere. But she's best known among a dedicated, slowly growing cult following that's tuned into her eccentric songcraft and stirring voice. Begin To Hope proved she could enter the world of major-label production values without losing her soul. —Keith Phipps
American Princes, Less And Less (Yep Roc)
It was a good year for the new-breed southern rockers like Lucero, Glossary, and this Little Rock band, which combines ruddy shades of regionalism with shack-rattling punk energy, finding a new voice for timeless lovelorn laments. —Noel Murray
The Black Angels, Passover (Light In The Attic)
Plenty of bands take inspiration from The Velvet Underground, but it's rare for a group to capture their spirit as well as Austin's Black Angels. The Angels' heavy, dark psychedelia also picks up the doom-laden flavor of Joy Division, making music that could easily belt out of the radio of Martin Sheen's boat in Apocalypse Now. —Christopher Bahn
Subtle, For Hero For Fool (Astralwerks)
The San Francisco-centered Anticon collective makes room for iconoclastic hip-hop, electronica, and avant-garde indie rock, and all those qualities come together in Subtle, a sextet that came back from a devastating car crash with this complex, layered album, the second in a projected trilogy. Lyricist Doseone approaches genius with his densely allusive, dreamlike imagery, delivered with the punch of a machine gun and the slanted outlook of a Beat poet. —Christopher Bahn
Honeycut, The Day I Turned To Glass (Quannum Projects)
Hip-hop, indie-funk, and classic soul mix with startlingly groovy results on The Day I Turned To Glass, an auspicious debut from Bay Area trio Honeycut. Influences (Shuggie Otis, Prince, Dr. Dre) and reference points (Gnarls Barkley, Lewis Taylor) abound, but clearly this is a group of talented originals mostly inspired by each other. "I think we might be having a blast," sings mellifluous frontman Bart Davenport on "Exodus Honey." The feeling is contagious. —Liam Gowing
Kaki King, …Until We Felt Red (Velour)
With the assistance of Tortoise/The Sea And Cake's John McEntire, fret-tapping/finger-picking wunderkind Kaki King hipped herself up considerably. On her third full-length, she's allowed her guitar virtuosity to comfortably share real estate with post-rock and Mark Kozelek-like dreaminess, resulting in a pigeonhole-immune package that equally respects style and substance. Guitar nerds and indie hipsters, unite! —Marc Hawthorne
Owen, At Home With Owen (Polyvinyl)
Mike Kinsella (a.k.a. Owen) is a former member of genre trailblazer Cap'n Jazz and a skilled writer of heart-on-sleeve lyrics, so it makes sense that he's been embraced by the emo nation. But instead of using trite clichés to get some backstage 'gine, Kinsella fills his hypnotic songs with warts-and-all imagery that makes them flinchingly real and completely romantic. "Whatever it is you think you are, you aren't: A good friend, unique, well-read, good-looking, or smart / Well now you know," opens At Home With Owen, a 38-minute exercise in beauty that once again proves Kinsella is one of America's finest singer-songwriters. —Marc Hawthorne