Paste Best Albums of 2008 | Patrol Magazine

Merely calling this Seattle band’s debut “pastoral,” eliminates countless opportunities for fun with psycho-topography...

Justin Vernon’s rags-to-riches story only adds to the beautiful depth of this folky debut...

Proudly trumpeting its Afro-pop influences, this scholastic quartet of Columbia grads made the year’s most rambunctiously inventive (and hyped) debut...

Death Cab’s second major-label release is a sonic feast. The drama-building atmospherics of sprawling first single “I Will Possess Your Heart” display a Radiohead-like shrewdness—an appreciation for the perfect mix of instrumental textures, anchored by metronomic drumming...

Rough, lush and magniloquent, this album is far more than a postscript to 2007’s The Stage Names.

Smooth, buoyant energy marks M83’s fifth album, dedicated to the digital outfit’s decade of choice, the 1980s...

The Dodo's Frenchkiss debut effectively combines so many typically separate elements of folk, Americana, electronic, indie and art-house into one album that it can almost feel like a cohesive, brief sampler CD....

The giddy experimentalism and collagist aesthetic of Kevin Barnes’ avant-pop outfit changes direction so frequently, you’ll marvel at the number of compelling ideas he manages to cram into an album that clocks in at just under an hour...

Dark is clever, sexy dance music that rewards repeated listening—the more you hear it, the more you can’t live without it.

This Los Angeles duo sprawls on Nouns, transcending its guitar/drums core with cascading atmospherics and feedback loops...

Without a doubt, 2008 hip-hop belonged to Dwayne Carter.

The Dark Prince of Rock ’n’ roll drops his most ass-shakin’ graveyard romp yet...

Only after “seeing a darkness” and “learning to let go” could Will Oldham find himself in the light like this...

Listening to Sandra McCracken’s crystalline voice offers the sonic equivalent of drinking ice-cold mountain spring water at its source.

Written and recorded in the year or so after Thao Nguyen graduated from college and landed her first record deal, this debut captures all the nebulous beauty and terror of being young in the world...

These Mississippi boys offer the best edge-of-your-seat energy since The Arcade Fire...

Whether they're her own, imagined or borrowed, eighteen-year-old Laura Marling does battle with some considerable demons on her first full-length debut: Miserable lovers, various psychoses, God himself...

Still the best argument for indie-pop hyperbole, these 29 Swedes dial up some darkness to expand an emotional palate otherwise rife with exuberance...

A sizzling mixtape that re-imagines 
Santogold’s sound (which was pretty imaginative to begin with), Top Ranking boasts a strong Caribbean accent and a genre-jumping tracklist...

This is no half-assed attempt at a white-boy Motown reproduction...

Those Swedes really know how to turn out pop princesses. Leading the innovative cool-girl pack on her ambitious debut, Li is the hook heavy, Euro-dance infused soul sister to friend El Perro del Mar’s lo-fi anthems...

At once deeply confessional and dangerously carefree, Norway’s latest export sings every song like she’s on the verge of breaking into a million pieces...

You'd be hard pressed to find something as alternately punishing and pleasant (at press time, our best guess was a marshmallow with—surprise!—a thumb tack inside)...

Iceland’s answer to Tom Waits takes another giant leap forward on Mugiboogie, the most viscerally super-charged album of his career. With sweat-dripping Pentecostal fervor and big-top grandiosity, Mugison claws out his still-beating heart and wrings it dry for listeners.

Harkening back to when music was a family affair, the beauty of this sunny debut lies in its simplicity: soaring pop songs anchored by charming hooks and bridges (no pun intended)....