271. Figurines

Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

272. Frightened Rabbit

For whatever reason I think of these guys as sort of the Scottish Counting Crows with a little more aggressive emotional frankness. Songs don’t come much more brutally blunt than this one: Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

289. Jesus Lizard

For a long time, to my discredit, I naively thought that Nirvana were either a singular phenomenon or a band whose closest cousin was Pearl Jam.  Only when I started really listening to music did I realize what different musical universes Nirvana and Pearl Jam really existed in.  And coming to this realization took some […]

Rate this:

296. Badly Drawn Boy

Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

297. Fleet Foxes

An atmospheric-bluegrass-folk-Beachboyharmony kind of bandwhose debut album is best listened to straight through so that it can wash over you.  The first song below is my favorite of theirs and the second is another really good one put to a claymation video, so heads up to fans of claymation. Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

299. The Hold Steady

The 21st Century ’70s Springsteen, Craig Finn writes songs that are anthemic, evocative, and rich with narrative and emotional detail and perceptiveness.  If his talk-singing didn’t become a slog so often, his band would rank much higher.  This song always makes me smile though: Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

300. Joseph Arthur

The list of my top 366 favorite bands now becomes a list of the top 300 with Joseph Arthur: Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

301. The Good Life

The Good Life’s Album of the Year is an album of a year long relationship and as a sucker for concept albums and songs about the complications of relationships, I eat it up.  I love this (long) song most.  It’s the only one with a female lead vocal on the album: Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

302. Jay Reatard

Easily one of the most prolific and promising punk rockers of the young century until his tragic and untimely death earlier this year: Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

305. Surfer Blood

The first terrific 2010 debuting band to make the list: Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

308. Dungen

Just the second of what will be many Swedish artists to make the list, but the only one who sings their songs in Swedish: Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

309. Wolf Parade

Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

311. Bloc Party

Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

313. Suckers

Their EP is only 4 songs long but it’s spectacular.  With a full LP this good, they’d rank way higher on the list.  Here’s their anthemic, “It Gets Your Body Movin’”.  One of those songs that felt so right to me the first time I heard it that I could have sworn I’d known it […]

Rate this:

320. Rilo Kiley

I find Jenny Lewis’s voice and delivery at its most distinctive to be  charmingly snotty and geeky.  But my favorite Rilo Kiley song is her gorgeous country song, “More Adventurous”.   Someday I hope they write the great album I’m sure they have in them but haven’t produced yet. Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

324. Glen Hansard/The Frames/The Swell Season

I probably don’t need to tell you about the movie that made Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová famous (or, if not famous, at least Oscar winners), but the real must film to watch is the hilarious claymation one somebody made for my favorite Frames song, “Fake”:

Rate this:

Magnetic Fields Documentary Coming!

Trailer!! Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

332. The Vaselines

Kurt Cobain loved this quirky band enough that Nirvana recorded three covers of their songs. Below are the Vaselines playing acoustic versions of those songs and then another of my favorites: Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

334. Blonde Redhead

Your Thoughts?

Rate this:

336. Los Campesinos!

I love bands with both a male and a female lead, so you’ll hear a bunch of them show up over the course of this list starting here with Los Campesinos!   This Welsh band’s songs are brim over with a truly vibrant, youthful energy and undeniably strong melodies.  The only drawback which prevents me […]

Rate this:

342. Fleming and John

No videos today since this band is small enough that there are no good videos of the song most responsible for their being on this list.  It’s called “SSSH!” and when I first discovered it I played it on a loop for about 30 times I found its lyrics and melodies and, most of all, […]

Rate this:

345. Metric

Metric is the band fronted by Broken Social Scenester Emily Haines, whose incredibly captivating vocal performance on “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” is  arguably the highlight of the Broken Social Scene’s entire recording career.  Motivated by love for “Anthems,” I dug into Haines’s work with Metric and as Emily Haines & The Soft […]

Rate this:

349. Marnie Stern

Do you like math rock?  Do you like girls who can totally shred on the guitar?  How about a great rhythm section?  Do you like screechy voices? And here she is live: And in interview form: (Full interview here.  Her recent album here.)

Rate this:

353. Japandroids

The Japandroids’ songs are essentially catchy melodic pop-rock songs that gain their edge from a monolithic droning guitar that carries through the whole album and is cranked so high and lo-fi to give the experience of listening to a killer pop song with treble pounding a dying set of speakers to death.  The drone and […]

Rate this:

R.I.P. Jay Reatard

Startling sad news.  He was only 29.  Pitchfork has more. Your Thoughts?

Rate this: