Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone. It has become a bit of my annual tradition to post a playlist of my favourite new music of the year, and this year shall be no exception. I still can't shake the feeling that this year wasn't quite as good as the year before, or the year before that, but maybe its just that this music is still too fresh to have fully penetrated into my consciousness. I'... [+]

Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone. It has become a bit of my annual tradition to post a playlist of my favourite new music of the year, and this year shall be no exception. I still can't shake the feeling that this year wasn't quite as good as the year before, or the year before that, but maybe its just that this music is still too fresh to have fully penetrated into my consciousness. I'm also feeling more and more that the hipster music 'blogosphere' is almost as narrow in its scope as the major labels, top 40 radio, and MTV. Hopefully, my music tastes haven't entirely been shaped by the likes of Pitchfork, Stereogum, and Elbo.ws.

Thus, I give you my own 'Top 40' of 2008, in something resembling a particular order. A few things I discovered is that MGMT are better when remixed, Stereolab can still release music as good as anything they've done before, and that the best indie tunes evoke misty windswept seascapes (see Shearwater and Okkervil River). An additional note, for those of you prone to misheard lyrics, is that the screeching falsetto chorus in Jaguar Love's "My Organ Sounds Like..." is actually "and everything it hurts" not "and I've got fingerholes" (although it would be so much better that way).

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