The Best Indie Rock Albums Of The 21st Century, Ranked

“I don’t want to do this. It’s too hard.”

That’s what I wanted to say when my boss asked me to write a column about my favorite indie-rock albums of the 21st century. Because it really is too hard. We’re talking about almost 25 years, after all. How many albums have come out in that time? It’s not thousands, it’s tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands, even.

Out of that astronomical number, how many are actually any good? I figured it had to be at least 37. Maybe even 41. The hard part would be getting all the way to 100 records.

But I kept my mouth shut. Times are tough, as we all know. And one can’t afford to deny a boss’ request. So here I am, about to embark on any epic journey through space and time and indie rock.

Will you join me? Let’s turn on the bright lights! Let’s clap our hands and say yeah! Let’s get lost in the dream! Let’s fetch the bolt cutters!

Let’s indie it up!

PRE-LIST ENTERTAINMENT: EVERYTHING MEANS NOTHING TO ME

What is indie? Does it describe the business relationship between an artist and a record label? Does it hinge solely on independence from the corporate mainstream? Does it describe a specific sound or vibe? Does it mean music with guitars, or is it a more amorphous term that applies to any music existing in the so-called “underground”? Is it all of these things? Is it none of them?

Before we proceed, we (or I) have to figure this out. And here is where I have landed: I don’t know, exactly, what indie is. And I definitely don’t know what indie means in the 21st century. Does it describe the business relationship between an artist and a record label? It can do that, but it frequently does not in terms of the common parlance. Does it hinge solely on independence from the corporate mainstream? Again, not really, unless you want to be pedantic to a degree that’s out of step with how normal people talk about music. Does it describe a specific sound or vibe? It describes a collection of sounds, which are not specific. Does it mean music with guitars, or is it a more amorphous term that applies to any music existing in the so-called “underground” of culture”?

Yes… and yes. However, for the purposes of this column, I have decided to stick mainly with the “music with guitars” definition. I did this because 1) it makes this impossible job slightly less impossible by limiting the possibilities and 2) I think that’s the image most people have whenever someone utters the words “indie rock.” It simplifies things, and it curbs any impulse I might have to pull a wacky” music-critic rhetorical flourish,” like the time Spin magazine put Skrillex on their list of 100 greatest guitar players. Some believe indie rock died on that very day. Luckily, they were wrong, or else you and I wouldn’t be here right now.

Back to the “what is indie?” question. I’m going to level with you: My rationale for which albums fit and which ones don’t is going to depend mostly on my own personal gut feeling. I will try to explain my gut’s actions, but never forget that we are still dealing with a middle-aged music critic’s stomach here. This is an organism without a brain or a heart. It’s just pure, uncut Id (and flesh and meat loaf and carbs).

However, there is one standard that I think will come in handy as we commune over these 100 albums. I call it The Is This It vs. Hot Fuss Test. For me, Is This It counts as indie rock and Hot Fuss does not. I acknowledge this does not, superficially, make sense. Is This It was the debut album by The Strokes released in 2001 on a major label, RCA. And Hot Fuss was the debut album by The Killers released in 2004 on a major label, Island. Both records are celebrated as millennial touchstones. The same kinds of people enjoy both LPs. They exist in adjacent lanes. But Is This It feels to me more like an indie rock record (in terms of the sound and ethos) and Hot Fuss is more like a regular rock record (because that’s what my gut tells me).

In my mind, consciously and not, I put beloved albums in either the Is This It lane or the Hot Fuss lane as I wrote this column. No matter what one might say about The Strokes’ indie cred otherwise, it feels impossible to talk about indie rock in the 21st century without discussing Is This It. Whereas Hot Fuss, an album I love (personal preference does not matter here), is not essential to the indie-rock narrative.

Wilco, Arctic Monkeys, Haim — I put them under Is This It. None of them are “indie” in the “true independence” sense, but they are similarly part of the larger indie story. Whereas Radiohead, Queens Of The Stone Age, and Jason Isbell, while I enjoy them all, don’t quite fit here. They make “regular” rock records in the Hot Fuss lane.

There’s only one album that does not fit in either place: Figure 8 by Elliott Smith. In 2000, Smith was about as indie as a guy could be without living on a sofa in Ian MacKaye’s basement. But he was also signed to Dreamworks, which meant that Steven Spielberg and David Geffen were technically his bosses. On the album, Smith wrote pained songs infused with subtextual ambivalence about his current professional standing. And he dressed those fraught tunes up in some of the most elaborate and pop-friendly music of his career. No track summed up these contradictory impulses better than “Everything Means Nothing To Me,” which was like an In Utero deep cut made to sound like Abbey Road.

Figure 8 was an album by an indie figurehead on a major label that expressed skepticism about corporate music in the guise of corporate music. It’s not on this list but it signifies the era this list covers about as well as any record I can think of.

100. The Soft Pack — The Soft Pack (2010)

Lists like this tend to be heavy on canonical records. What is a canonical record, after all, if not a record expressly designed to be included on lists like this?

This list has plenty of canonical indie-rock albums. But it does not have all the canonical indie-rock albums. I understand there are readers — I’m speaking to the Command-F people here, my sworn enemies — who will (I’m quoting from memory) “immediately disregard everything you have written or ever will write” if you don’t happen to list every single no-brainer. So why not just rip off the Band-Aid right away?

Arcade Fire’s Funeral is not on this list. Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois is not on this list. Nothing by St. Vincent is on this list. Neither are Death Cab For Cutie, The 1975, or Broken Social Scene. How could I do such a thing? Well, there’s two reasons. No. 1: My interest in this music ranges from “it’s okay” to “I actively don’t care.” I recognize their importance in the grand scheme of things, but 100 albums is not as many albums as you might think — this particular grand scheme can only include so much music, and I had to cut it off somewhere.

No. 2: By not including those artists, it left room for The Soft Pack, whose self-titled LP has long been a personal favorite, especially the breakout song “Answer To Yourself,” one of the great, unsung rock songs of the 2010s. Haven’t we heard enough about Funeral and Illinois? The Soft Pack is precisely the sort of “Remember Some Guys” content I want to celebrate here.

99. The Postal Service — Give Up (2003)

Just to head off the inevitable comment from a reply guy with a blue check and a bad attitude: I didn’t exclude Arcade Fire because they are “canceled,” whatever that means. My feelings on that band, and on Funeral especially, have always been mixed for purely musical reasons. “Rebellion (Lies)” is an amazing song, but the one where Regine sings about Haiti really bugs me to this day. And so it goes with Arcade Fire. Their hit rate with me generally is about 50/50. Transcendence walked hand-in-hand with wanton embarrassment in the Arcade Fire camp long before Win Butler became the subject of investigative journalism.

However, I want to make it clear this column isn’t based only on my own stupid feelings and my own moronic gut. I am also taking things like Cultural Significance and Musical Importance into account. Some records matter because they have mattered for a long time, and “mattering for a long time” matters. Which is why I’m putting Give Up here, even if I believe that it peaks with the first two songs — the two most famous ones, “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” and “Such Great Heights” — and never really recovers momentum. This album is responsible for influencing so much terrible indie and indie-adjacent music this century, which is an undeniable badge of distinction for a record. Anyone with a keyboard and a boyish tenor believed they could be Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello. More often, they couldn’t even match Owl City.

(Also, my hope is that this placates the Death Cab people — not the Death Cab people have ever been threatening to anyone, other than the FOX TV executives responsible for canceling The O.C.)

98. Ratboys — GN (2017)

The downside of weighing Cultural Significance and Musical Importance is that you create a bias for older albums over newer albums. I generally don’t have a problem with that, as one of my pet peeves with something like last year’s Apple 100 list is how it pits Marquee Moon and Pet Sounds against some pop record that came out last month. In my view, any list starts to break down once you start comparing albums that came out more than 30 years apart. At that point, you’re not really talking about apples and apples anymore. The bigger the expanse of time gets, the more ridiculous the proposition of ranking becomes. Smart people can agree that Bad Bunny makes good music, and smart people can also agree that Beethoven makes good music. But it seems like the opposite of smart to weigh the virtues of Debi Tirar Más Fotos versus Symphony No. 9.

Fortunately for me, we’re only talking about 25 years plus three or so months here. Which is why I feel good about putting a relatively recent record like GN — a foundational melding of emo and alt-country (for modern bands interested in melding emo with alt-country) by one of the most consistent indie-rock bands of the last decade — at No. 98.

97. Title Fight — Hyperview (2015)

If you are a young-ish indie rock band that incorporates significant shoegaze elements in 2025 — is there a young-ish indie rock band that doesn’t incorporate significant shoegaze elements in 2025? — then you are likely intimately familiar with this record. If I make this list again in 10 years, this album will probably be at least 20 spots higher.

96. Alex G — House Of Sugar (2019)

It’s just a fact that because of my bias in favor of Cultural Significance and Musical Importance — as well as my old-ass advanced age — this list is going to give more weight to records that have been out for a longer period of time over records that have been out for a shorter period of time. In my defense, I didn’t just start believing this at 47. I also thought it was the right way to assess albums when I was 27. Marquee Moon, I’m sorry, simply has more of a track record when it comes to influence and endurance than, say, Short N’ Sweet. And mileage is a valuable currency in this type of endeavor.

With Alex G, I would bet on him also leaping forward 20 spots on the 2035 list. However, I can also envision a scenario in which this extremely internet-y singer-songwriter is remembered as the Beck of the 2010s. For those too young to process this analogy: Beck was frequently discussed in the 1990s as one of the most forward-thinking and influential artists of the 1990s. But after the 1990s, his music sounded not like the future but like the 1990s.

Does a similar fate await Alex G? Let’s check back in about 3,650 days.

95. 100 Gecs — 10,000 Gecs (2023)

Everything I just said about Alex G, but about the 2020s.

94. Mac DeMarco — Salad Days (2014)

As with Arcade Fire, I have had my ups and downs with Mac. But his Musical Importance in the indie-rock world is considerable. And I have a lot of personal affection for this particular record, which best encapsulates the appeal of his sneaky-earnest, overtly lackadaisical slacker-dude guitar pop. Plus, I have a vivid memory of hearing “Chamber Of Reflection” once in the lobby of a Los Angeles boutique hotel, which is a true “signifies its era” situation if there ever was one.

93. Yeah Yeah Yeahs — Fever To Tell (2003)

I should also mention that I decided to include only one album per act. I did this to ensure the most variety possible, and to spare myself the fan-boy humiliation of including every record by The War On Drugs. But this decision does open up another potential can of worms — listing the “wrong” record from a loaded discography.

For some acts, this danger looms especially large. For instance, there is just one Spoon record on this list. But which Spoon record? It could, conceivably, be any Spoon record released since the turn of the century. (Yes, I even mean you, Hot Thoughts. Good record!)

For the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever To Tell seems like the most logical choice. It’s the debut, it put them on the map, and it’s the one that has the song “Maps.” That said, I think I personally prefer It’s Blitz, which is well-regarded but not as canonical. Moving forward, I won’t always go with the canonical pick, but I will this time.

92. Jessica Pratt — Here In The Pitch (2024)

Jessica Pratt doesn’t have as many albums as Spoon, but nevertheless, it’s almost as difficult to single out just one for this list. Picking her most recent one smacks of recency bias, only Here In The Pitch really does feel like the culmination of Pratt’s artistic journey from solitary underground folk-rock chanteuse recording (presumably) in some lonely hotel illuminated by a single dangling light bulb, to the (relatively) musically expansive sounds contained on Pratt’s most accessible and mainstream effort to date.

91. Sleater-Kinney — The Woods (2005)

The people who prefer All Hands On The Bad One or One Beat have a case. The ones who would stump for any Sleater-Kinney record without Janet Weiss do not. Personally, I prefer this album, where they decided to become the Riot Grrrl Led Zeppelin and obliterated every lemon with a 50-mile radius.

90. Cat Power — You Are Free (2003)

If it’s the summertime and I’m standing outside next to a grill, I will swear by The Greatest. Otherwise, this is the go-to Cat Power album for the 21st century, even if it feels like one of her ’90s albums, and not only because the best song can be described as “a stellar Eddie Vedder duet.”

89. Broadcast — Tender Buttons (2005)

A controversial pick for this British band, perhaps, given that their previous two records — 2000’s The Noise Made By People and 2003’s Haha Sound — are considered twin classics of electro-rock hybridization, drawing on ’60s psychedelia, Krautrock, and a litany of ingeniously distorted and decaying electronic drones. But I’m giving the nod to Broadcast’s third LP, a personal favorite, where they stripped down to a duo and distilled their chaotic essence down to a set of spooky-catchy hymns that pointed toward a scary horizon while evoking a shadowy, mysterious past.

88. Sky Ferreira — Night Time, My Time (2013)

An album so good that it made everybody wait forever for the follow-up, Masochism, aka the Chinese Democracy of 21st century indie rock. Pitchfork once published a Sky Ferreira profile promising that “her first album in six years will be worth the wait.” That was six years ago this week. But if you’re wondering why people still care, the bad-girl eclecticism of Night Time, My Time will serve as a potent reminder. Fact is the indie-pop game needs Ferreira, who brings toughness and attitude to a subgenre woefully lacking in both of those qualities.

87. Low — Hey What (2021)

Is this the best “last album” album on this list? It’s certainly the most daring. Low rivals Spoon as far as having multiple records that could slot here, but for me, their swan song Hey What remains the most moving. Their previous record, Double Negative, was an even more radical break from Low’s foundational slowcore sound. And yet, Hey What gets the nod for the added warmth of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk’s vocals, which signified the power of their union (personal and artistic) as Parker fought valiantly against ovarian cancer. (The illness claimed her life the following year.) On this record, you feel the force of their love and shared commitment, which stands against terrifying waves of sound and fury, sonic and otherwise.

86. Steve Gunn — Eyes On The Lines (2016)

In 2013, it seemed like “music with guitars”-style indie might be finished, at least as a form of music that critics would give the time of day. I recall one incident where a well-known staff writer from a prominent publication challenged a freelancer for Salon.com to a public debate after he wrote dismissively about Taylor Swift’s Red. The idea (I think) was to defend the honor of this specific pop star as well as the sanctity of pop music in general, which was perceived to be under attack from trucker hat-wearing hipsters.

That particular war has long since ended. And this has actually helped the critical standing of “music with guitars”-style indie, especially among younger writers who have come to regard Pavement as a sort of Gen X version of the Grateful Dead.

For an avowed #indiejam-backer like myself, this was a positive development. In terms of #indiejam — which might as well be defined as the midpoint between the Dead and Pavement — this Steve Gunn record represents a pinnacle of the subgenre.

85. Cass McCombs — Tip Of The Sphere (2019)

Another #indiejam pinnacle. Such a pinnacle that the bass player on this record plays in the well-regarded Dead tribute act, Grateful Shred. Such a pinnacle that one of the best songs sounds like a rip-off of “Free” by Phish. Such a pinnacle that I took the rest of the afternoon off after writing this blurb and hung out on the back patio.

84. Deafheaven — Sunbather (2013)

Speaking of patio music: No album has a better or more deceptive “patio-friendly” album title than this one. I played this iconic union of black metal and dream pop on the patio once in 2013. The following year, I sold my house. The year after that, I left the state. These events are (probably) coincidental. But I can’t say for certain.

83. TV On The Radio — Return To Cookie Mountain (2006)

Similar to how Pavement was reclaimed by Deadheads who discovered jam-band music decades after Jerry died, TV On The Radio sounds way more like a jam band than they did back in the late aughts, when they were routinely topping year-end lists. Given TVOTR’s extended hiatus, the most reliable shot at hearing this band’s music live has been via Phish, who have covered “Golden Age” (from 2008’s Dear Science, which was almost my choice here) for years now.

Alas, I went with Cookie Mountain because this is the record with “Wolf Like Me,” which stands out as an “exhilarating explosion of energy” outlier like “The Rat” does in The Walkmen’s discography. Like their jam-band brethren, TV On The Radio was better live than on record, and the definitive version of that song is probably the one from The Late Show With David Letterman, which reliably goes viral on social media every other month.

82. Joyce Manor — Never Hungover Again (2014)

We are already 3,000 words into this operation (!) and I’ve neglected to mention my most important qualification for writing this column: My professional career encompasses nearly all of the 21st century. I started my first post-college journalism job on August 14, 2000. New albums out around that time include the first Animal Collective LP, The Dandy Warhols’ Thirteen Tales Of Urban Bohemia, and Shaggy’s Hotshot, which went on to sell nine million copies worldwide.

None of these albums are on this list (though I did almost include Shaggy for comedic purposes). But my larger point stands: I have been on that wall for nearly a quarter-century now. Which is to say: I have a ton of “Remember Some Guys” material to share here. But before that, let’s salute a more contemporary classic, a Weezer album for the 2010s, if Rivers Cuomo had been influenced by Alien Lanes. In the space of a single episode of The White Lotus, you can listen to this 19-minute record three times, which to me would be a much more worthwhile endeavor.

81. Andy Shauf — The Party (2016)

This album feels like a movie, a sad comedy (one of my favorite genres), like Sideways if it had been written and directed by Wes Anderson. Andy Shauf’s reputation for crafting immersive miniaturist concept albums crystallized here, with each song unfolding as a character study about a different 20-something party-goer experiencing something quietly profound. And those stories are soundtracked by perfectly recorded guitar, bass, drum sounds coalescing to create heart-tugging retro-pop symphonies.

I wish this record had come out in my 20s and not almost a decade after I turned 30, though perhaps I wouldn’t have had proper perspective on how accurately Shauf captures the ennui of that age.

80. Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Matt Sweeney — Superwolf (2005)

This record actually did come out in my 20s. I turned 28 in 2005, and I spent at least two days per week drinking craft beers served by well-mustachioed bartenders in bars that had David Allan Coe’s 17 Greatest Hits playing semi-ironically on a CD jukebox. In other words: I did not buy this folk-rock masterpiece, I was issued it by the government.

79. Blitzen Trapper — Furr (2008)

Did someone say “Remember Some Guys”? Blitzen Trapper continues to put out quality indie-Americana records like 2024’s 100’s Of 1000’s, Millions Of Billions. But Furr is the one where they made a new Wilco record that sounded like every other Wilco record put together. I retired from smoking weed in the early 2010s, but this album always gives me a contact high that hits with the mellow potency of first-term Obama era schwag.

78. Yuck — Yuck (2011)

The “Remember Some Guys” spirit has been strong with this band in recent weeks, after Daniel Blumberg won an Oscar for scoring The Brutalist. The head Yuckster has been cagey about his indie-rock past since remaking himself as a respected film composer, which says something about how this kind of music was regarded (not regarded) in the early 2010s. The first Yuck record was actually well reviewed, though there was a backhanded nature to the praise, with Blumberg’s band typically categorized as ’90s revivalists rehashing the few lasting flickers of chunky guitar rock. Little did anyone know that guitar bands would still be drawing on Dinosaur Jr. and Superchunk in 2025, like the classic-rockers of old endlessly drawing deep inspiration from the Delta Blues. If I can carry over that analogy one step further: Yuck were the Yardbirds of ’90s indie-rock purism.

77. Marah — Kids In Philly (2000)

Going back to the year I officially started my media career: This was a very hyped record in 2000. Nick Hornby was writing for The New Yorker at the time, and when he wasn’t publishing columns about how Kid A was a tiresome bore, he was praising these Springsteen-worshipping Pennsylvanians. As a Springsteen-loving Wisconsinite, I also adored Kids In Philly, no matter how anachronistic many elements were. (The horn section, the Jackie Wilson references, the lead singer who sounded like he gargled busted-up pieces of vinyl before laying down his vocal, etc.) Marah were a “return of rock” band who peaked one year before the press went crazy for The Strokes, which was just one example of them being ahead of their time. By the back half of the aughts, scores of Springsteen acolytes — The Hold Steady, Titus Andronicus, Arcade Fire, The Gaslight Anthem — would be currying critical and popular favor. But Marah got there first.

76. The Fresh & Onlys — Play It Strange (2010)

Surveying the modern psych-tinged garage-rock landscape, there are (broadly speaking) two kinds of bands, which I will define as the “Thee Oh Sees” camp (more garage-y than psych) and the “King Gizzard” camp (more psych than garage-y). The Fresh & Onlys belong to the former group. Hailing from San Francisco, they played with surf-rock pop songs drenched in reverb and lysergic menace, a formula perfected on Play It Strange with songs like the irresistibly propulsive “Waterfall” and the self-explanatory “Be My Hooker,” which in the parlance of our times should be reclassified as “Consent For Employment As My Sex Worker.”

75. Foxygen — We Are The 21st Ambassadors Of Peace & Magic (2013)

For bands in the “more psych than garage-y” camp, it was customary to make your decadent “take loads of drugs and wander the desert” album. This trope reached its apotheosis with MGMT’s Congratulations and Father John Misty’s Fear Fun, though a more recent example can be found in the form of Geese’s excellent 2023 LP, 3D Country. Foxygen stands out among these bands for making every record a “take loads of drugs and wander the desert”-style exercise in performative excess. Though We Are The 21st Ambassadors Of Peace & Magic is the best example of Foxygen performing consistently great songs in that format. (More scattershot releases like 2014’s …And Star Power demonstrate the shortcomings of this approach.)

74. Of Montreal — Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? (2007)

A real “they don’t make ’em like this” anymore record. They didn’t really make ’em like this all that much in 2007, either. Of Montreal emerged from the Elephant 6 world, perhaps the least sexual music scene to ever gain semi-prominent indie-fame. But Of Montreal stood out in that world as subversive horn dogs. And Hissing Fauna was their decadent big swing, though the fuel wasn’t drugs but rather romantic heartache and a fascination with Prince’s mid-’80s period. This music evoked profound depression, which was in line with typical indie sensibilities (then and now). But it was also incredibly lusty, fearlessly so, which was way out of character, in the best possible way.

73. Fleet Foxes — Fleet Foxes (2008)

As virginal as Hissing Fauna is debauched. Hearing this record makes me think about voting for Barack Obama (the first, optimistic time). It also reminds me of buying a house (which happened about two months before this album came out) and getting married (which happened two months after). Given that the financial crisis was looming, the former decision proved more disastrous than the latter one. But I didn’t know that in the summer of 2008. Times were innocent then. The vibes were so warm we listened to “White Winter Hymnal” to cool off.

72. Beach House — Teen Dream (2010)

There are eight Beach House albums, but there is really only one Beach House album. It’s the mid-paced one where Victoria Legrand’s smoky vocals are perfectly offset with a gauzy soundscape of airy guitars, vintage keyboards, and sleepy rhythms engineered by Alex Scally. You know, that one. This is the best example of that one.

71. Weyes Blood — Titanic Rising (2019)

If I were spit-balling a hack documentary about 21st indie rock, I would probably say something like this right about now: “The popularity of acts like Fleet Foxes and Beach House during the first Obama administration is indicative of an inward-looking shift among young Gen Xers and old millennials, who were drawn to pretty and comfy music that distracted them from the creeping demons of modern culture. Socially, politically, economically — the nation was slowly dissolving from within. And yet this music soothed indie listeners into a false sense of calm and hopefulness.”

Now, I’m not not saying this isn’t some truth embedded there. But I think it simplifies the nature of “political” songwriting in the modern age, and overlooks how barbed-wire sentiments are sometimes baked inside proverbial pans of lemon meringue pie. Take Titanic Rising, a breathtaking update on ’70s AM pop that sounds like The Carpenters after watching a climate-change documentary. I can’t think of a more apocalyptic album from recent years — or a more beautiful one.

70. Bill Callahan — Apocalypse (2011)

Actually, I might have to immediately amend that statement. This record, after all, is literally called Apocalypse. And it contains one of my all-time favorite tearjerkers, “Riding For The Feeling,” which I would love to be played at my funeral. Though, honestly, it might be more appropriate — not to mention funnier — if they instead played “America!” Like Bill, I never served by country. But I salute the gods Kristofferson, Newbury, Jones, and Cash anyway.

69. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart — The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart (2009)

The band name was widely mocked. (Only Diarrhea Planet preemptively turned off more people.) But the band name rooted them in their time. If you were an utterly average indie-rock listener in 2009 — an “I get my news from The Daily Show” schnook straight from central casting — you were intimately familiar with the pains of being pure at heart. (It felt like being in your 20s and watching Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.)

68. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (2005)

Another band name turned into a punchline. Only this time, the joke is about blog rock, that strain of “music with guitars” indie that was juiced by the hundreds of citizen music journalists who were empowered by guerrilla PR agents and the lack of social media. I don’t want to overly romanticize the blog rock era, as they were a lot of forgettable bands who attained temporary indie fame on the strength of one or two buzzy singles overhyped by writers who wrote for websites with whimsical animal-related monikers. But this period tends to be over-generalized as only being about forgettable bands, which should not apply to the figureheads of the subgenre. The first Clap Your Heads So Yeah LP is a thoroughly fantastic indie-rock record, cycling through various references to bygone alt-rock — Talking Heads, My Bloody Valentine, Pixies, etc. — and integrating them into a seamless whole that can only be described as the most “mid-aughts indie shit” you can imagine.

67. Wolf Parade — Apologies To The Queen Mary (2005)

Lest anyone think — based on my snubs of Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene — that I am taking a reactionary position against Canada in this politically tenuous times, surely my love of Apologies To The Queen Mary will show that I am in favor of rousing and anthemic aughts-era indie CanRock. This album, in fact, boasts what is possibly the single greatest indie-rock song to come out of that country in the 2000s: “Shine A Light,” which is so good and forceful it can instantly shatter any onerous tariff proposal upon impact.

66. Constantines — Shine A Light (2003)

Speaking of Canadian indie-rock bands… and Canadian indie-rock songs called “Shine A Light,” let’s take another stroll down “Remember Some Guys” lane with Constantines. Like my beloved Marah, Constantines were on the “worship Bruce Springsteen” bandwagon a little too early. If Shine A Light had come out two years later, it would have benefited from two different waves in indie rock: The Arcade Fire/Broken Social Scene “anthemic Canadian rock” thing, and the Hold Steady/Alligator era National “indie guys nodding to Bruce” movement. In 2003, people were still fixated on the revival of New York City rock and not enough on brawny Canucks who could make “Born To Run” sound like Fugazi.

65. Bloc Party — Silent Alarm (2005)

Is 2005 the greatest year for indie rock this century? This is the sixth album from that year I have talked about so far. And there are several more ahead, and countless more that aren’t here but I still nevertheless love. 2005 certainly is one of the greatest years for a particular kind of indie rock — band-centric, adjacent to prime-era post-punk and alt-rock, and (to revive a term I just made up to describe Clap Your Hands Say Yeah) extremely “mid-aughts indie shit.”

It was also a golden era for kick-ass indie-rock drummers. And Matt Tong was one of the era’s most dynamic.

64. Cloud Nothings — Attack On Memory (2012)

A “mid-aughts indie shit” record that came out in the early 2010s, when such a thing was just starting to feel like revivalism. At the time, I was a fan of the previous Cloud Nothings album, which was fun, home-recorded, and somewhat twee guitar pop. I suggested the band for a Chicago street party hosted by The A.V. Club (where I was working) in the summer of 2011, when they played the Attack On Memory songs (I think) for the first time, starting with the decidedly not-twee opening song, “No Future/No Past.” Joining them was new-ish drummer Jason Gerycz, who helped to take the songs (and Cloud Nothings) in a much more aggressive direction. Suffice it to say they kicked my ass that day, just like they did each time I subsequently put on Attack On Memory.

63. Amen Dunes — Freedom (2018)

This record was as transformational for Amen Dunes as Attack On Memory was for Cloud Nothings. Normally an outsider, avant-folk artist, Damon McMahon temporarily took inspiration from monocultural musical blockbusters from the 1980s and ’90s — from Nirvana to Michael Jackson to Massive Attack — which influenced him to write insistently catchy and emotionally engaging songs. Replacing rustic contemplation with a sinewy, sleekly seductive melange of relentless motorik beats and wiry electric guitars, Freedom was both an intimate singer-songwriter record and a hypnotic, star-gazing epic that positively soars with romantic uplift.

62. Waxahatchee — Cerulean Salt (2013)

Speaking of transformations, Katie Crutchfield guided Waxahatchee from the DIY fringes to the mainstream of Americana over a dozen or so years. Recent efforts like Saint Cloud and Tigers Blood are justly celebrated for their lyrical insight and down home music, but I’ve found myself lately reaching for the noisier and more rocking records that Crutchfield made earlier in her career. The second Waxahatchee record, Cerulean Salt, is the pivot point in the band’s career — the basement-show scrappiness is still on display, but it also points toward the records that Crutchfield would later make as a mature artist. As Crutchfield told me in 2024, “Cerulean Salt to me is the first record I made where some through-lines for what would continue on in my work start to present themselves.”

61. Wednesday — Rat Saw God (2023)

Katie Crutchfield is a central figure in the southern wing of modern indie rock, and her work helped to reintroduce regionalism into a genre that for years seemed to live exclusively online or in two or three coastal cities. Waxahatchee is the link between godfathers and mothers like R.E.M., Lucinda Williams, and Drive-By Truckers and the current standard-bearers of southern indie rock, Wednesday. Karly Hartzman announced herself as a major songwriter on 2021’s Twin Plagues, where her mix of novelistic (and seedy) storytelling and muscular ’90s-style riffage first fully came together. But the next Wednesday record, Rat Saw God, is the magnum opus. (So far, at least.) “The title alone of the opening track, ‘Hot Rotten Grass Smell,’ filled my nostrils with the aroma of a humid late July day,” I wrote in my review. “Tapping into that kind of visceral sense memory grants instant authenticity to the world that Hartzman creates on this record. The nail salons with the lights turned off, the sex shops off the highway with biblical names, the rundown houses with cocaine and guns hidden in the walls — you see, smell, feel, hear, and taste them all.

60. Haim — Days Are Gone (2013)

In the recent Susan Morrison book Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, the author’s Buddha-like subject says that there are films, and there are movies, and there are confections. Lorne Michael’s goal, more often than not, was to make confections. Days Are Gone is also a confection, and it’s the best album by one of the most influential bands on modern indie rock (or whatever you want to call the music that is covered by indie-music media in 2025).

59. Phoenix — Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009)

In 2013, I wrote a column about Days Are Gone that ran under the headline “Indie Rock’s Tuneful Death Rattle.” I didn’t write that headline, but I mostly agreed with its implications. The idea was to talk about a group of records released around the same time — which also included music by The 1975, Chvrches, Lorde, and Icona Pop — that were broadly classified as “indie” but did not conform to previously accepted conventions of what “indie” is. “In sound and form, there’s nothing that’s weird, experimental, or potentially off-putting about them,” I wrote about these records. “They’re well produced, catchy, immediately likable, and fashioned in the mold of successful trends. They are simply pop pop records.”

Looking back, nothing about this seems remotely controversial. In the moment, what is often said about 2013 being a transitional year in indie rock was already apparent — “music with guitars” indie was being marginalized in favor of a new crop of bands with none of the anti-pop animus of previous generations. I was just pointing out the obvious. But because of the aforementioned taste wars among critics — where the honor of Taylor Swift was defended via duels-to-the-death in the streets, etc. — I was slagged a fair amount online.

So be it. I probably deserved it. After all, what I was saying Days Are Gone had codified in 2013 was probably already codified four years earlier by the even frothier and catcher Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.

58. Real Estate — Days (2011)

As I revisited albums that I adore but I haven’t played in years during the writing of this column, the era I have been most fascinated by is the early 2010s. Not because it’s the best era, necessarily, but because it seems like the least appreciated. This was the time when indie acts who first achieved acclaim and popularity in the aughts started to face a market correction from critics who believed that indie-rock bands had been overpraised. (We shall refer to this as “The Centipede HZ Era.”) The toughest time for these bands was 2012 to 2014, so Real Estate actually got under the wire with their second album, Days, which just edges out their winning self-titled debut for inclusion here.

57. DIIV — Is The Is Are (2016)

DIIV put out their first LP, Oshin, in 2012, so they were born in the middle of the backlash. That record actually sounded a bit like Real Estate, who were quietly one of the more influential bands of their generation for a few years. But DIIV had none of Real Estate’s sunniness or penchant for sweetly melancholy nostalgia; their music instead had a darker undertow that on the first two albums, including the sophomore effort Is The Is Are, stemmed from Zachary Cole Smith’s troubled private life. On Is The Is Are — the most frustratingly titled great album of this era — that disorder is foregrounded on songs that sound like transmissions from the void.

56. M83 — Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (2011)

Includes “Midnight City,” which has been declared by some critics (including me) as the greatest single of the 2010s. It came out the same year as the movie Drive, which includes many songs on the soundtrack that sound a lot like “Midnight City.” Because that’s what people wanted in 2011 — atmospheric synths and sultry sax solos.

Honestly, this album has a million tracks and I couldn’t pick half of them out of a lineup. But if you have “Midnight City” in your corner, you are entitled to (at least) the No. 56 spot on any list.

55. Parquet Courts — Light Up Gold (2013)

This album does not have a million tracks, and I could definitely pick the ones that are here (15 in all) out of a lineup. But, similar to Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, the main reason this album has a place in my heart is that it begins so spectacularly well. I refer to the opening double-shot of “Master Of My Craft” and “Borrowed Time,” which represents the most viscerally exciting five minutes and 42 seconds to come from a guitar band in the 2012-2014 window. And then there’s “Stoned And Starving,” which delivers almost as many thrills in almost the same amount of time, only in the space of one song.

54. Jim O’Rourke — Insignificance (2001)

If we’re going to talk about indie-rock albums that open like a heart attack on fire, the conversation probably must end with this album and “All Downhill From Here,” which thankfully is not an accurately titled song, at least as it pertains to the rest of this record.

53. Wild Pink — Yolk In The Fur (2018)

When I profiled Parquet Courts in 2014, the headline (which I did help to write) was “The Last Great New York Band?” This should indicate how long the post-Strokes “search for a new Strokes” hangover lasted, and also when it started to dissipate. Frankly, this headline might have already been out of date in 2014. The ghost had long since been given up on the “New York band” concept, with Philadelphia already established as the new place indie-rock bands moved to work and try to achieve “living wage” levels of success. Just three years later, a new New York band called Wild Pink put out their self-titled record, which commenced one of the consistent careers for an indie-rock act in the past decade. Yolk In The Fur is my personal favorite, but I could have put any of their four other records here, too.

52. The Walkmen — Lisbon (2010)

A great New York band from the golden age of great New York bands. I’m including their 2010 album here because 1) I love it and 2) I have a pet peeve about people who reduce The Walkmen to “the band who made ‘The Rat.'” This happens so much that it actually makes me like “The Rat” a little less, which only adds to my overall annoyance. I think we would all be better off if people reconsidered their kneejerk opinions and simply listened to “Blue As Your Blood” on repeat.

51. Rilo Kiley — The Execution Of All Things (2002)

Like Haim’s Days Are Gone, this album has an outsized influence on modern indie rock. It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that nearly all artists who fall under the “confessional singer-songwriter” banner are in some way biting from what Jenny Lewis is doing on The Execution Of All Things. And, in almost every instance, they are doing it with less style and wit.

50. Jenny Lewis — On The Line (2019)

As much as I love Rilo Kiley, I slightly prefer Jenny Lewis’ solo albums. And that slight preference is enough to edge her into the top half of this list. With each passing LP, her writing grows sharper and more insightful, and her records fuller and more elegantly produced. This one gets the edge over her outstanding solo debut, Rabbit Fur Coat, if only because I’m a sucker for hearing Jenny sing about drinking Red Bull and Hennessey while Ringo Starr bashes out time.

49. Guided By Voices — Isolation Drills (2001)

This record, unlike the entries from Rilo Kiley or Haim, has no discernible influence on modern indie rock. It did, however, influence me to drink 10,000 beers at a GBV show in Indianapolis in December of 2001.

48. LCD Soundsystem — Sound Of Silver (2007)

I admit it: I still hold the fake farewell concert and movie against them. It was horribly corny and permanently sullied James Murphy’s name in my mind. I stand behind my assessment from 2022: “In the space between Shut Up And Play The Hits and LCD Soundsystem’s return, I grew up a lot. I became a parent. I wasn’t going out to bars every night. I like to think I am a little less narcissistic and more inclined to define myself not by what I like, but by things that actually matter. You remember that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry dates a woman (played by Janeane Garofalo) who is exactly like him? At first, he loves it. But eventually, he comes to a pivotal realization: ‘I can’t be with someone who’s like me,’ he wails. “I hate myself!” My relationship with James Murphy is a lot like that. But my problem isn’t really with James Murphy. It’s with the James Murphy I see inside of myself.”

HAVING SAID ALL THAT: The first three albums hold up. Sound Of Silver deserves to be in the top half of this list. But just barely.

47. Wrens — The Meadowlands (2003)

I put this at No. 47 because this album is catnip for the average 47-year-old indie-rock fan. (I know this because I am an average 47-year-old indie-rock fan.) If you say the word “Wrens” to an average 47-year-old indie-rock fan, he will instantly launch into a reverie about how The Meadowlands is a beloved cult favorite in which every song builds to an emotionally overpowering peak, with impossibly high stakes, as if the lives of bookish fellows with receding hairlines everywhere will be disrupted irrevocably if the climactic guitar solo does not arrive on time. (Thankfully, it always does.)

46. Gang Of Youths — Go Farther In Lightness (2017)

The Meadowlands, famously, was such an amazing record that the Wrens struggled for years to make a follow-up, finally splitting up into different factions nearly 20 years after the fact. I, however, do have the wherewithal to follow The Meadowlands on this list, and I’m doing it with an album that’s even more dramatic and grandiose and filled with somehow higher peaks. Sadly, this Australian band never hit it as big here in America as they did at home and in Europe, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. Perhaps it says something about the state of “music with guitars” indie in the 2010s that Go Farther In Lightness didn’t become, commercially speaking, the 21st century’s answer to The Joshua Tree. But it deserved to be.

45. Arctic Monkeys — A.M. (2013)

This album was hit in America, and pretty much every place else on the globe. “Do I Wanna Know” is — along with “Seven Nation Army” and “Mr. Brightside” — one of the most well-known rock songs of the last 25 years. This record was so dominant that it broke Alex Turner’s brain — forever afterward, he studiously avoided leather jackets, hair gel, riffs, and anything else with a “rock ‘n’ roll” shape. He’s been stuck writing lounge-jazz concept albums for the past dozen or so years, all because millions of middle schoolers made A.M. their Tumblr personality in the early 2010s.

44. Air — Talkie Walkie (2004)

My No. 1 writing album of the quarter-century. I am listening to it as we speak. Everything I write here is partly the fault of Niclas Godin and Jean-Benoît Duncklel. If you have a problem with this column, I am sure they would excusez moi on my behalf.

43. Jay Reatard — Blood Visions (2006)

One of the more tragic “what if?” stories from the past 25 years. No matter his dunderheaded stage name, the singer-songwriter Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr. was a gifted songwriter and performer who played some of the most scorching and fast-paced shows I’ve ever seen, before passing away in 2010 at the age of just 29. I wrote this upon the 10th anniversary of his death in 2020: “At a time when pop and indie music are as mellow as they ever have been in my lifetime, Reatard’s music seems even more abrasive, caustic, and uncompromising now than it did then. He might have felt as though he didn’t belong in the late aughts, but it actually wasn’t inconceivable for a person like him to become at least indie-famous back then. Reatard was another link in the era’s middle-American garage-punk lineage, situated somewhere between The White Stripes as they wound down their career, and The Black Keys as they geared up for their arena-rock ascendance.”

His finest moment on record is his debut studio album, conceived as a concept record about an unstable man who stalks and kills his girlfriend, an attractive set-up for the horror-movie-addled Jay. Though the delivery is far from kitschy. In songs like “It’s So Easy,” where he sings in the chorus about how “when your friends are dead / it’s so much easier when you don’t even care,” he updated the comic nihilism of the Ramones with the irony almost entirely removed. It was unadulterated adolescent id — as guileless as The Beach Boys’ “In My Room,” filtered through the murderous rage of Slayer’s Reign In Blood.

42. Courtney Barnett — The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas (2013)

In 2018, near the end of my second book Twilight Of The Gods: A Journey To The End Of Classic Rock, I made a case for Courtney Barnett being the next great rock singer-songwriter poised to reign over her era. I based that on my love of this compilation of early EP releases and her proper full-length debut, 2015’s fantastic Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit. Since then, it’s felt like Barnett’s star has faded. Her subsequent albums felt like less exciting reiterations of the early material, with the humor that was so critical to her best songs feeling forced and less witty. Sometimes, as a listener, you can lose touch with the artists who once felt central to your life as a music fan. But writing this column sent me back to The Double EP, and I was thrilled to discover that I liked just as much as I did a dozen years ago. If “Avant Gardner” came out tomorrow from some new, unknown Australian wunderkind, it would automatically be my new favorite song of 2025.

41. Phoebe Bridgers — Punisher (2020)

If I had written Twilight Of The Gods a few years later, I surely would have namechecked a different dryly clever singer-songwriter whose second album is one of the most imitated indie-rock albums of the 2020s. It’s hard to remember a time when Phoebe Bridgers wasn’t one of the most indie-famous people on the planet. But heading into Punisher, her only calling card was the slow-burn success of her 2017 debut, Stranger In The Alps, highlighted by the deftly underplayed diss track “Motion Sickness.” For her second record, Bridgers deepened her songwriting and proved herself adept at pocket-sized confessionals that play like vivid snapshots of relationships in “slo-mo car crash” mode. I’m still not crazy about the production, which is the only reason this album isn’t placed higher — hopefully Phoebe will allow herself an audible rhythm section and a discernible guitar riff or two on the follow up.

40. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead — Source Tags & Codes (2002)

This album is remembered, in part, for the fact that Pitchfork gave it a perfect 10, a score the review’s writer later regretted: “If you look at it as a marker of cultural significance that one would expect to extend beyond the moment of evaluation, I think it’s fair to say that it was not a great call.”

Once again, Cultural Significance is invoked! Embedded in that statement is an implicit viewpoint that was common among critics in the 21st century, which is that music that sounds like “classic” indie rock can’t possibly be considered “classic” in the modern sense because this sensibility is no longer trendy. I understand the logic behind this argument, even though I don’t agree with it. Anyway: I give this record a 15.3 out of 10.

39. Fiery Furnaces — Blueberry Boat (2004)

I’m confident that any 21-year-old of any generation who cares about “music with guitars” indie can get behind Source Tags & Codes. It’s sort of impossible to love that kind of music and not love that album. Blueberry Boat, however, remains a more polarizing proposition, just as it was in 2004. I remember buying this album after reading rave reviews online, and then having a serious “WTF is this shit?” moment during the endless instrumental intro to the 10-minute-plus opening track “Quay Cur.” I am sure that thousands of other music nerds had a similar experience that summer. Blueberry Boat plays, on first listen, like a willfully annoying provocation perpetrated by sneaky music critics against too-trusting readers. Many of those readers chucked their Blueberry Boat CDs before “Quay Cur” even ended. But more patient listeners were rewarded with some of the most bonkers indie-prog songs of the century. Over time, it even made sense in pop music.

38. Joanna Newsom — Have One On Me (2010)

Love it or hate it, Blueberry Boat signifies a time when indie culture was still separate from mainstream culture, which allowed a band as strange and noncommercial as the Fiery Furnaces to achieve a measure of fame without being compared to, say, the enormity of Beyoncé or Coldplay. Joanna Newsom also benefited from that window of time, when a harpist could compose dense 10-minute songs lavished with string sections and lyrics about whimsical woodland creatures and still garner a sizable audience. In that respect, she reached the apotheosis of her innate Joanna Newsom-ness with 2006’s Ys, an even more extreme indie-prog statement than Blueberry Boat that was, somehow, also more acclaimed. However, I’m going instead with Have One On Me, which is both her most epic record (make that triple record) and also her most accessible, particularly if you like upbeat jazz-rock songs about pavement companies.

37. Titus Andronicus — The Monitor (2010)

You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You will always be a loser
You’ll always be a loser now… AND THAT’S OKAY!

36. Japandroids — Celebration Rock (2012)

[pants loudly for 45 seconds, with hands on knees, before finally gathering myself]

Who could use a beer?

35. Bon Iver — 22, A Million (2016)

As it became rarer in the 2010s for an indie-rock band to achieve true crossover success, it was also more unusual to see popular indie acts release “anti-fame” records that rejected mainstream acceptance. 22, A Million is the exception. After Justin Vernon was feted with Grammys and platinum records and SNL parodies, he went into hiding for a few years and then re-emerged with a deeply druggy and murky curveball with song titles that read like coded messages from a serial killer. It was like Yeezus for besweatered individuals who came of age in northwestern Wisconsin. And speaking as a besweatered person who came of age in northwestern Wisconsin, it was pretty mind-blowing.

34. MGMT — Congratulations (2010)

22, A Million is my second favorite anti-fame album of the 21st century. This is my first favorite. It doesn’t have the hits of Oracular Spectacular, a defining “dorm room” indie album of the aughts. But MGMT’s debut is a showcase for singles surrounded by good-to-adequate filler. Congratulations is the record where Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser secured their reputation as the Steely Dan of the Pirate Bay generation.

33. Bright Eyes — I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning (2005)

The antithesis of the “anti-fame” record. This was Conor Oberst assessing his moment, seeing that people were looking for him to assume “New Dylan” status, saying “I can do that,” and then writing and recording an album that absolutely lived up to the hype. My friend and podcast co-host Ian Cohen has made hating this album a personal crusade, and while I love him personally and respect him professionally, this is his single most wrong take. Sometimes (not always, but sometimes) the most likeable album is also the best album.

So, come on, let’s go to a birthday party. It’s your birthday. Happy birthday, darling. We love you very, very, very, very, very much.

32. Car Seat Headrest — Teens Of Denial (2016)

First class furry representation.

31. The New Pornographers — Electric Version (2003)

Apologies to Boygenius, but this is the only great and essential indie-rock supergroup of the century.

30. Grizzly Bear — Veckatimest (2009)

Right when the wave of arty indie that had been gaining steam since Blueberry Boat achieved critical mass at the end of the decade, the backlash started to really kick in. Surveying their own’ “Pazz And Jop” critics poll dominated by Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, and Grizzly Bear, The Village Voice declared it “the year of too much consensus” and decried the current crop of critics darlings as “insular prissy-pants indie-rock.”

Looking back, the charge seems short-sighted. Maybe 2009 was dominated by indie-rock records because… a lot of amazing indie-rock records came out that year? Future years wouldn’t always be so rich! If only we had the luxury in 2025 of being inundated by records from high-profile bands that balanced artistic ambition, aesthetic weirdness, and understated pop smarts!

One of the best of that 2009 class was Veckatimest, which sounded exquisite then and sounds even better now, given that we’re no longer spoiled with new Grizzly Bear music every three or four years. This record is part of a trilogy — with 2006’s Yellow House and 2012’s Shields — where they seemed like, potentially, the animal-coded American art-rock analogue to Radiohead. They gave insular prissy-pants indie-rock a good name.

29. Kurt Vile — Wakin On A Pretty Day (2013)

[Extreme Kurt Vile voice] Yeah.

28. Songs: Ohia — The Magnolia Electric Co. (2003)

This album was praised upon release, but its stock has gone up dramatically in recent years, as Jason Molina has been posthumously emulated by so many up and coming singer-songwriters transfixed by his sad-sack lyrics and live-wire guitar dirges. I recently wrote this about the album: “In the public consciousness his output tends to be reduced to just one track, ‘Farewell Transmission,’ from his most popular album, The Magnolia Electric Co. The miracle of The Magnolia Electric Co. is that the rest of the record doesn’t feel like a letdown after opening with that deathless classic. At the time, the album represented the most straight-forward ‘rock’ music that Molina had yet made. Though it also felt slightly behind the times, given the strides that Jeff Tweedy — among Molina’s more successful Midwestern peers — had recently made with Wilco beyond the sort of chunky alt-country The Magnolia Electric Co. traffics in. No matter: Even when Molina cranked the amps, he still made the music sound intimate and lonely.”

27. Band Of Horses — Everything All The Time (2006)

I wrote this part of the column on March 20, the day of the spring equinox, which automatically boosted Everything All The Time 20 spots. When it comes to soundtracking your next weed party, accept no substitutes.

26. My Morning Jacket — It Still Moves (2003)

If it were the summer equinox, It Still Moves would be No. 1.

25. Drive-By Truckers — The Dirty South (2003)

Not technically a supergroup, but this era of the Truckers boasted the most collective songwriting talent among southerners since The Highwaymen. Frontman Patterson Hood was at the peak of his powers as a conceptualist, building on the surprise success of Southern Rock Opera to delve even deeper into the politics and mythos of the region on delirious parables like “Tornadoes” and “Lookout Mountain.” His long-time sidekick Mike Cooley matched him with wry and hard-rocking character studies about ’50s rock stars (“Carl Perkins Cadillac”) and career criminals (“Cottonseed”). And then there was young Jason Isbell, who confirmed that he was a burgeoning talent with songs like “Danko/Manuel” and “Goddamn Lonely Love” that still rank with his finest compositions.

24. Spoon — Kill The Moonlight (2002)

I went with the fourth Spoon album. I suspect that many readers prefer the fifth (Gimme Fiction) or the sixth (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga). There might also be a few votes for Transference and They Want My Soul out there. I get it — this literally is the band I used as the example of modern indie-rock consistency. Nevertheless, I’m sticking with Kill The Moonlight, because I think it’s the best Spoon album and also the most representative Spoon record (which isn’t the same thing, though Kill The Moonlight checks both boxes.) It expertly balances their “accessible pop” side (“The Way We Get By”) with their noisier “experimental” instincts (“Back To The Life”). You can put it on at a cookout, or you can enjoy it on headphones. I have played it at least 1,000 times in the past 23 years and have never tired of it. And how much more Spoon can you get than that?

23. Big Thief — Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (2022)

“This may strike some as hyperbole but I don’t care because it’s true,” I wrote in my review. “As strong as the other Big Thief albums are, they feel like rough drafts for what they’ve finally achieved here. I’ve had a promo of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You for a few months, and it already feels like the kind of album that’s destined to be handed down from generation to generation, like Automatic For The People or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It’s music I know I will reach for on epic road trips or in the midst of profound grief. An all-timer. A masterpiece. They really did it this time.”

Three years later, I still believe that. In the past decade, when bands increasingly seemed like a rarity — even in the indie world, which is now dominated by one-person operations that add hired guns on stage — Big Thief had outsized relevance as a signifier in collective power. Alas, they haven’t put out a record since, as the band members have been busy with, naturally, solo projects. Hopefully, that changes soon.

22. Tame Impala — Lonerism (2012)

If I were only using Musical Importance and Cultural Significance as my personal barometers, I would put Currents — possibly the most imitated indie-adjacent album of the last 10 years — in this spot. But while I love Currents, I’m going instead with the record before it, just because it blew my brain particles wider and farther. “With Lonerism, for whatever reason, I guess I’d just found my calling more so than before,” Kevin Parker told me in 2020. “I had this wave of curiosity and boldness. I just felt fearless. There are more pop songs on Lonerism than the first one or anything I’d done before. Even though the sound is totally gnarled and blown out, to me it sounded like Backstreet Boys in some of it, or it sounded like Prince.”

21. Vampire Weekend — Vampire Weekend (2008)

One of the most charming and purely likeable indie-rock records of the century, which is why it’s so strange that Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut pissed so many people off. Released a few years before social media achieved true critical mass — which was truly a blessing for all involved, whether you’re a VW fan and or a hater — this album inspired countless thinkpieces about privilege, appropriation, the rapidity of blog-rock fame, the utility of indie musicians wearing sweaters, and so on. And yet what remains all these years later are the songs, which are both lightly effervescent and sturdily unbreakable, with loads of pop hooks and subtle production flourishes that preserve the melodic sweetness in amber. Meanwhile, Ezra Koenig’s lyrics gently interrogate the same cultural contradictions that troubled his critics, only with far more intelligence and wit.

20. Mitski — Puberty 2 (2016)

Few indie artists have navigated the path from indie-fame to genuine-kind-of-scary fame better than Mitski. This despite Mitski dealing with her share of online creeps and other frightening annoyances. From an artistic perspective, Mitski has maintained an air of mystery, building on a persona that is supported (and sometimes subverted) by her canny art-rock songs. At the time of Puberty 2, she was just starting to transition from the fringes to the indie-mainstream, a move catalyzed by the album’s most famous song, the anthemic “Your Best American Girl,” which encapsulated her unique ability to address Twitter-friendly themes (racial identity, isolation, etc.) in a manner that felt both melodramatically heightened and surprisingly approachable, conversational even. Musically, Puberty 2 elaborated upon the scrappy folk-punk sound of her previous work with sweeping pop gestures, foreshadowing the celebrity status that was just around the corner.

19. MJ Lenderman — Manning Fireworks (2024)

The only problem I have with putting Manning Fireworks here is that I like the album before it, Boat Songs, about as much. And I might like the MJ Lenderman live album even more. But I made an unofficial rule to not put live albums on this list, so here we are. And it’s just as well, since Manning Fireworks 1) already feels like a modern classic and 2) seems like it will be copied endlessly for the next few years until we are all tired of sad/witty country-rockers who play guitar solos borrowed from Son Volt’s Trace.

What am I saying? I will never tire of such a thing!

18. Alvvays — Alvvays (2014)

Here, the inner debate was between the self-titled debut and the most recent Alvvays album, Blue Rev. (No disrespect to Antisocialites, the middle record, and therefore always cursed to be unfairly overlooked.) The advantage of Blue Rev is that it builds on the strengths of the previous two Alvvays albums — perfect songs, perfect production, Molly Rankin’s perfect voice — and beefs them up with ace production from Shawn Everett, one of the finest indie-rock knob twiddlers of the modern era.

The advantage of Alvvays is that it has “Archie, Marry Me,” the greatest indie-pop song of the 21st century. And the other tracks don’t sound like garbage next to it, which proves their greatness as well. Ultimately, I went with the debut.

17. The Shins — Oh, Inverted World (2001)

I might just have a bias for debut albums. I went with the first Shins record over Chutes Too Narrow, which is the one I’ve seen pop up more consistently on “best indie rock of the 21st century” lists like this. Maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe the world is wrong. Honestly, I don’t see the case for Chutes over the record that has “New Slang” and “Caring Is Creepy” and nine other timeless gems. That is, unless you have a pathological hatred of Zach Braff and Garden State. In which case… I understand.

16. Deerhunter — Microcastle (2008)

Deciding between this and Halcyon Digest was all but impossible. “Desire Lines” goes with “Archie, Marry Me” on the “all-time indie-rock songs of the 21st century” short list. But Microcastle overall is just a little better. Honestly, they feel like one big album to me, covering the era when I unapologetically considered Deerhunter America’s greatest band. Bradford Cox certainly is a “don’t make ’em like this anymore” indie-rock star, a shy bedroom pop genius who transformed into an outrageous provocateur and magnetic stage presence whenever Deerhunter took these enigmatic and seductive trance-rock songs on the road.

15. Modest Mouse — The Moon & Antarctica (2000)

Now we’re getting to the deep, deep, DEEEEEP essentials. Upon the 20th anniversary of Modest Mouse’s third album, I argued that “The Moon & Antarctica paved the way for what indie became in the 21st century. Rather than present three dudes bashing away sweatily just like they did on stage, this album was elegant and impeccably crafted, seamlessly integrating elements of folk, country, psychedelia, disco, and orchestral music. But these diverse elements counterintuitively made Modest Mouse sound (especially in retrospect) more like a ‘normal’ rock band, smoothing out their rough edges and sweetening their most acidic attributes, a process that was finalized on the blockbuster Good News For People Who Like Bad News.”

There are mostly compliments in that passage, though like Elliott Smith’s Figure 8, there’s a lot of melancholy and loss in there.

14. The Hold Steady — Separation Sunday (2005)

“For a lot of people, that’s still their favorite record,” Craig Finn once told me regarding the second Hold Steady LP. It was also a pivotal moment for the New York band, who set themselves apart from their Gotham City peers by embracing their Midwestern roots. “I remember at the time really not wanting to be the Midwestern guy that moves to New York and then three minutes is a Yankees fan,” Finn added. “A lot of people do reinvent themselves when they’re here. I started wanting to do the opposite of that.”

Instead, The Hold Steady made their name with songs that dug as deep into the lore of Minneapolis as Bruce Springsteen writing about the ins and outs of the New Jersey turnpike. Somehow, this translated beyond the upper Midwest, no doubt in part because of Tad Kubler’s heavy riffs and Franz Nicolay’s theatrical piano playing. Even more surprising, it made The Hold Steady indie stars at a time when it was still possible for a band who looked like The Hold Steady to become stars.

13. Animal Collective — Feels (2005)

One of my favorite albums of all time, The Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You, has a bunch of upbeat songs on Side 1 and a bunch of pretty songs on Side 2. Another one of my favorite albums of all time, Animal Collective’s Feels, has a bunch of upbeat songs on Side 1 and a bunch of pretty songs on Side 2. In this thinkpiece, I will demonstrate that…

12. The National — Alligator (2005)

You know a band has achieved something truly special when they mean something different to multiple generations. More than any other indie band of the modern era, this is true for The National. Other bands have carried forward (or been “passed down,” as it were), but they tend to be appreciated by all ages for the same reasons. But The National, whose following can be divided somewhat neatly into pre- and post-Taylor Swift factions, signify vastly different things to different audiences. For the latter group, The National might as well not exist before Sleep Well Beast. (Maybe High Violet, if the listener is a true crate digger.) For the former group, The National peaked in the 2000s, back when they were a louder and drunker rock band. Alligator is the apotheosis of this time, and since my ancient ass is the one writing this column, it’s the version of The National represented here.

11. Lana Del Rey — Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019)

The rare example of an artist having a specific ambition — “I want to one day make an album so epic and prescient and beautiful that will be considered, at worst, the No. 11 best indie-rock album of the 21st century, based on the personal preference of the writer but more so on undeniable Cultural Significance and Musical Importance” — and sticking the landing perfectly.

The only reason I didn’t put this in the Top 10 is that it has 14 songs. If it were 10 songs, it would be a Top 10 lock. Those four extra songs dilute the apocalyptic/funereal vibe ever so slightly. The alternative would be to make an entire album out of the outro to “Venice Bitch,” which would make Norman Fucking Rockwell! the best album of the century.

10. Panda Bear — Person Pitch (2007)

For some of the ’90s and most of the aughts, there was a generation of indie musicians who set out to make their version of The Beach Boys’ Smile. This was not a sensible goal, given that The Beach Boys themselves could not successfully execute Smile. But some artists nevertheless came close — the Flaming Lips on The Soft Bulletin, R.E.M. on the song “At My Most Beautiful,” various Elephant 6 acts, etc. But Panda Bear did Smile the best on Person Pitch. And, yes, I’m including Brian Wilson himself, who I think might agree with me if he ever heard “Comfy In Nautica.”

9. Fiona Apple — Extraordinary Machine (2005)

In the 1960s, the most romanticized albums were never released because the mental stability of the geniuses making them was fragile like porcelain pony figurines. In the 2000s, however, the most romanticized albums were held back by record companies dubiously anxious about the commercial prospects of seemingly uncommercial music. Two of the records in my Top 10 were famous for having protracted gestation periods marked by corporate interference, internet leaks, public outcries, and eventual critical and popular triumphs. The first of these is Extraordinary Machine, which strangely is the most accessible music Fiona Apple has made in the past 20 years. (When I say Extraordinary Machine, I’m really talking about an amalgam of the officially released record and the mythical “Jon Brion Version,” which in reality isn’t exactly the “Jon Brion Version.”) Whereas her next two records, 2012’s The Idler Wheel… and 2020’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters, are more radical and confrontational, Extraordinary Machine sounds like a collection of furious, funny, fastidious, and all-around fantastic pop songs made with an assortment of LA hired guns. It’s, almost, an old-fashioned singer-songwriter record, the sort of comfort listen that could have come out in any decade, in this century or the last.

8. Interpol — Turn On The Bright Lights (2002)

Where have you gone, Carlos D? Our nation of bass line-loving indie rock fans turns its lonely eyes to you, woo woo woo.

7. The War On Drugs — Lost In The Dream (2014)

I love this album so much that I wrote a fifth anniversary column about it in 2019, an act that probably should have gotten me suspended by the NMCC (National Music Critics Council). A fifth anniversary column is just egregious content creation. But my heart was in the right place. “It’s an album inspired formally by the denim-clad icons of FM rock’s glorious past, bursting at the seams with outsized synth hooks and improvised, rafters-seeking guitar solos,” I wrote at the time. “But sonically, Lost In The Dream is murkier, cloudier, dreamier, than ’70s and ’80s rock. It sounds like a Springsteen album that’s been dubbed on a Maxell tape, and then warped slightly after sitting for decades in a musty car glove compartment. Because that’s how those of us who grew up with classic rock culture as a passed-down, second-hand cultural heirloom first discovered this music. It’s not something that ever seemed shiny and brand new — you had to dig it out of the detritus of the past, wipe away the uncool dad-rock baggage, and settle in with it as a secret that other people your age would never understand, that something so ubiquitous and even corny could speak to you like nothing else.”

6. Father John Misty — I Love You Honeybear (2015)

The century’s best album about marriage, and using snarkiness as a shield against your own sensitivity, and owning up to the semi-toxic thoughts you would never tweet, and living in a time when “having semi-toxic thoughts you would never tweet” was actually a thing for a certain kind of too-online person that I absolutely am (and you are too, probably).

5. The Strokes — Is This It (2001)

When I put on I Love You Honeybear, I hear the person that I am. When I put on this album, I hear the person I wanted to be at 24 and knew I never could be. (Neither could The Strokes, ultimately.)

I should add that I think Room On Fire is probably better, but it’s simply not allowed to not put Is This It in the Top Five.

4. The White Stripes — White Blood Cells (2001)

I’m an xennial from the Upper Midwest, which means I’m eternally loyal to Jack and Meg White. Therefore, they get the slight edge over The Strokes.

3. Purple Mountains — Purple Mountains (2019)

A master songwriter spends years crafting a set of new songs. He tries several times to record them, to no avail. He keeps on revising and crafting his material. More years pass. The legend grows in his public absence. There’s a sense that what he does is even more valuable than it was before, because so many people emulate him without matching his output. Few are aware that he’s meticulously plotting a return.

Finally, he successfully lays down the new songs on wax. They sound good, he decides. The words are droll and heartfelt, and the music deceptively bouncy and engaging. He turns the songs into his long-time label, which releases his new record under a new name to universal acclaim. The man, after a long break, has proven to the world that he’s still the best guy in the world at writing indie-rock songs. He books a tour, his first in more than a decade. The response, again, is overwhelmingly positive. He rehearses with a band, a mix of new numbers and old favorites. All signs point up. After so much doubt and isolation, the world is ready to welcome him back with open arms.

I prefer to stop the story right there.

2. Destroyer — Kaputt (2011)

We lost David Berman but we still, thank god, have Dan Bejar. Few artists have given us as many wonderful albums this century. And no one — no one I can think of, anyway — has hit as many artistic home runs while demonstrating an intoxicating “I don’t care if people get this” courageousness. A man out of time, Bejar is more reminiscent of old bards like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen than any of his supposed peers, as far as fearlessly putting out music without regard for audience expectations. This is even true of Kaputt, his most popular record, which caught on in the indie world despite sounding nothing like what was in vogue at the time. An unabashedly lush and romantic record, Kaputt initially sounds like music designed to be played by yuppies snorting cocaine off of CD jewel cases while splayed out on bearskin rugs in 1987. But Bejar’s singular approach — part sly irony, part genuine sensualness — makes Kaputt a thoroughly 21st century statement about finding love and adventure despite pervasive spiritual and technological alienation. (Except it’s a lot of funnier and more rock ‘n’ roll than that sounds.)

1. Wilco — Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

Wilco is my generation’s Beatles, and this is our Sgt. Pepper. It has Cultural Significance, it has Musical Importance, and it has my own undying love. So it goes at No. 1. Though I’m affixing an invisible asterisk, since in my mind, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot actually means the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot box set, with all the dozens of outtakes and live tracks. As great as the proper album is, as I wrote in 2022, “the long and restless journey in search of that greatness has always been more fascinating to me, for the same reason that rock geeks have long obsessed over the making of similarly ‘difficult’ paradigm-shifting curveballs like Pet Sounds, Tusk, and Kid A. For many months during 2000 and ’01 at The Loft, Wilco’s north side Chicago rehearsal space and studio, they ran through countless different versions of the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot songs. In the process, they touched on nearly every corner of modern music history, dabbling in classic Brill Building pop, spacey psychedelia, blistering krautrock, rustic folk, surly garage punk, bubblegum funk, John Cage-inspired dissonance, and various points in-between.” In that sense, this album is almost as vast as the 21st century itself.