Balancing a not-inconsiderable amount of ambition with a dismissal (or at least ignorance) of their own hype, Wilco come off as nothing if not hard workers on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, even if they still used controversy to their advantage promotionally (they're not stupid). No one held a gun to your head demanding you swoon to the damaged, beautiful strains of Jesus, Etc. and Poor Places, least of all Wilco. But if swoon you did, you knew it was one of the few albums of last year worth rallying behind, worth hearing again and again until it became, well, a classic.

I'm a full grown man, he whooped, but I'm not afraid to cry. That was Sexx Laws, the lead track from 1999's polyurethane Midnite Vultures. Good for a quick laugh. But it turns out Hansen was serious. Two minutes into the cannily titled Sea Change, he's moaning: These days I barely get by. I don't even try. Yeah, this is Beck's broken-heart record, as disarming in its naked vulnerability as Loser was for its winking nihilism. Start to finish, he's dwelling here in disconsolate shadows. And somehow the result is more luminous than lachrymose. This is the kind of muted melancholy that thrived in the non-glossy '70s (before the disco-funk that inspired Vultures, in fact). As always, Beck borrows -- Round the Bend might as well be the hidden track on Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left -- but his sentiments, for once, seem uncontrived. Of course, this may turn out to be a genre exercise after all; he ends the album by musing about someplace I'd like to go. Fine, move on, leave your blues behind. Glad you stayed awhile.

When not fiddling with a directorial debut (Christmas on Mars), backing Beck, making monkeyshines in TV commercials for computers or re-releasing their putrid punk-psych roots, The Flaming Lips have become the least likely bestest, most adventurous band in the U.S. since Talking Heads. Yoshimi proves it. Main man Wayne Coyne -- a vocalist of dramatic ethereal renown -- sends his detached lyrical texts and mutant electronic bubblegum Muzak into a childlike theatrical world of sinister altered states. It's what would happen if Björk swan-dived into a Ken Russell-esque take on Willy Wonka by way of George Harrison. For all the avant-loopy melodicism, there's a digital, trip-hoppy heft -- as on One More Robot -- that's nearly danceable. But this ain't no disco. And The Flaming Lips aren't fooling around.

The vocals have got snippier, even the curt drumming could do with cracking a smile, but for all that, One Beat swerves into greatness every so often. From the Polly Harvey-esque title track to Step Aside, which frankly resembles nothing so much as a war dirge, there's a regimented, harder sound at the heart of this record, and more than a note of rising panic. There's no time for milkshake 'n' honey when they're telling us our country's marching to the beat Where is the questioning, where is the protest song? 'Course, the answer's right here, which makes for a noble if faintly literal album. Here's to cheering up.

Plainspoken, uncluttered and effortless, Norah Jones arrived in 2002 as an antidote not only to jazz pretensions but also the glitzy-ditz plague of contemporary pop. The songs on her Blue Note debut -- most penned by guitarist/singer Jesse Harris and bassist/boyfriend Lee Alexander -- hearken back a ways, to the cradle of acoustic country-folk-pop. They're catchy but not condescending, crafty without being too clever. As for the vocalist herself, Jones doesn't dazzle like Mariah or Christina or, for that matter, Cassandra; what she does is fold you in a seductive yet familiar embrace.

Nobody does the menacing moan-chorus better than Queens of the Stone Age. The presence of a few of them on Songs for the Deaf would have been enough to place it in the top 10 for any year. But adding to that mix the greatest drummer in the world, minor-key rock songs that skip by jauntily (seriously!) and riffs that are Mrs. Butterworth-thick? Whoa. Even with a somewhat weak concept threading it -- thanks, guys, but if I want to listen to crappy self-parodic radio, I'll just flip mine on -- Songs for the Deaf, to be blunt, kicked all the ass. And really, that was all it needed to do.

Black Thought would like to thank the nonbelievers, cocksuredly commences the liner thank-yous on The Roots' renegade new album, Phrenology. But, dig it: There are reasons why folks who never believed in Philadelphia's resident hip-hop superstars deserve praise. One of them is that it ensured The Roots never rested on their laurels. Another is that, if everybody had believed in them years ago, The Roots might have reached their zenith way too quickly and then defused. Phrenology is the stratospheric dust real musical icons are made of. It's for both believers and non, haters, players, gods, earths, junkies, doctors, lovers and grandmothers. Steal this album.

After a decade-long hiatus in Olympia, Wash., sweet indie chanteuse Mirah came back to Philly for a while and we were lucky to have her. Following up the smallish, simple, sensual pleasures of 2000's You Think It's Like This But Really It's Like This was no easy endeavor, but Advisory Committee does the trick by going big, big, big! Well, not really. This is still the sort of hot little bedroom pop you want from Mirah, but she's embracing her grander side here and there, and it's an adrenaline rush. The opening track, Cold Cold Water, makes a passionate, deliberate roar with booming floor toms and swishing cymbals and a vocal note so unexpectedly high that dolphins understand it better than we do. She's moving away again in a few months, for reasons of love (aw), and it's our loss. Last weekend when a drunken Sugar Town crowd wouldn't shut up, Mirah simply moved the microphone stand back and invited her audience up on stage with her.It was a telling and genuine moment. Mirah is the bee's knees.

With its barbed guitar lines and melancholy harmonies, Honey sounds like a cross between Stands for Decibels and Beatles for Sale. Even more so than the Philly band's debut, the album plays as if all the horrible things that happen in power-pop -- wussy sentiment, derivative riffs -- never came to pass, making it a direct line to the genre's halcyon days. Twenty years from now, Bought Your Ghost and Minivan Blues will still be showing up on mix-tapes.

London Bridge is burning down, Brixton's burning up. Welcome to where garage rhymes with carriage, and where the two-step/jungle scene of the same name has set the U.K. on fire. Mike Skinner (a.k.a. The Streets) spits rhymes that engage the left side of your brain, charmed with East-End geezer slang and ranging free through the tiny universe of pubs, clubs and weathered London back alleys. Backed with spare beats and rosy brass, Skinner's tracks are so euphorically lush, you'd have a hard time guessing that this 21-year-old Birmingham kid produced most of 'em on his laptop. If I said this was the best hip-hop album by a talented white boy last year, it'd probably be an unnatural comparison with a certain Detroit phenomenon. But then, I just said it.

As a band, Low develops as slowly as its music. But if the pace is glacial, the chance is seismic -- imperceptible in real time, but profound in retrospect. The Minnesota trio's sixth album isn't jarringly different from, say, their third, but they've been purifying their sound over the years, and with Trust, a wintry jewel emerges from the acid bath. Spiritual, haunting, and as catchy as a February flu, it's the potent distillation of a band whose strength has always been its simplicity.

It's a good sign when a major label takes a chance on a small art-rock band with a convoluted name. Hardcore fervor mixed with complex song structure and strings -- are these the same passive-aggressive Texans who broke The Khyber ceiling this summer? Still, Source Tags & Codes melds its ambitions and intricacies into a beautiful visceral whole, from the opening clamor of It Was There That I Saw You to the finale title track exiting off into the sunset. Revolution? Tough to say. Perhaps it matters more that the bigwigs actually seem to care again about the art they release. Then again, forget art; this is some of the most vital rock we've heard in years.

It was one of the better MTV promos of recent years: Kids silently sitting in their cars on a clear night, their doors open, their eyes turned heavenward, the swirly, echo-y tuning-strains of Interpol's Untitled flowing out of their stereos' speakers. Of course, the show the ad was touting was god-awful, but you wouldn't see a more fitting plug for Turn on the Bright Lights. Its guitars refuse to stop reaching ever outward and upward -- no matter how loud the stereo volume goes, no matter if you blow off the roof and let the chords bounce into the twinkling night sky.

At first glance, Sigur Rôs' third LP looks like pretentious drivel, what with its 70 minutes of untitled music, blank liner notes and cryptic title, ( ). But pop it in, run the bath water, add a bottle of wine and a bit of candlelight, and you will be sucked into an ethereal world of whirling guitars and floating pianos, distant drums and gorgeous, inhuman vocals. This record is the soundtrack to a place seldom visited awake, or for that matter, alive.

At times on Our Constant Concern, cute couple Kori and Jason Hammel really seems to be yelling -- happily, mind you -- at each other. In truth, they're singing; but they're definitely singing at each other. The duo's second album is filthy with catchy, plinky keyboards and slapdash drumming; it feels as much like domestic eavesdropping as a great pop record. Using their big voices to fill out the sound, they often sing over one another, trading lines like we will laugh, we will laugh of how our nerves caught and held us down and I'm trying to be someone else. It's almost as if it's actually their internal monologues yelling verses back and forth -- and when they start singing together for the choruses, it's kind of eerie.

Not every child actor ends up boxing on Fox or knocking over a dollar store. Pop guitarist Blake Sennet (once known as Pinsky on Nickelodeon's Salute Your Shorts) and honey-voiced Jenny Lewis (who played Shelley Long's daughter in Troop Beverly Hills, if you can fucking believe that) went on to form the nexus of one of the sweetest, smartest pop/rock bands out there. There was no need to make a post-9/11 record (they accidentally made that one two years ago; Take Offs and Landings was presciently all about watching planes crashing on TV). Though scarier and more daring, Execution thrives on catchy melodies, understated guitar licks and twisted lyrics about environmental and romantic confusion. The images are bleak, but you'll end up wanting to live in Lewis' charming dystopia.

There's something about Conor Oberst, something familiar, something human. It's in the way his lips quiver as the syllables creep out, the way his voice cracks when a whisper turns to a scream. The latest LP from Bright Eyes is a rare achievement. Both excessive and sparse, songs are layered with strings, drums, horns and a choir one moment, and stripped bare the next. Like a hidden tape recorder rolling in a dark bedroom, Lifted or the Story captures Oberst at his most vulnerable. This is music with blood coursing through its verses, the sound of a man who must purge his words to stay alive.

Silenced for more than 15 years (literally, after losing her ability to sing), Linda Thompson's stellar return, Fashionably Late, proved Richard's ex is a musical powerhouse on her own terms. Unlike 1985's overly slick One Clear Moment -- her only other solo outing after bitterly parting ways with her hubby/musical partner -- Fashionably Late shimmers in its folk-laden simplicity. With a focus on Linda's gorgeous, earthy voice, the songs here are by turns haunting, morose and quirky. There's a magnificent cohesiveness throughout, helped along by the solid songwriting (shared mostly with son Teddy). Daughter Kamila sings, and even Richard (the subject of the bittersweet closer, Dear Old Man of Mine) lends a hand, making this one hell of a family reunion.

2002 was a productive year for The Mountain Goats: one comp of rarities, one Sub Pop single, a debut disc from The Extra Glenns side project, a one-sided 10-inch and two full CDs of new music: All Hail West Texas and Tallahassee. That the former beat the latter on this list smells of a political move. Though the Florida-set record is spectacular, with a full backing band and bigger studio budget, maybe nobody wanted to encourage John Darnielle to break from his decade-old guy-and-a-guitar setup (as is omnipresent on the equally compelling Texas-based disc). Maybe we just hate success (or progress?) or maybe All Hail's opening anthem, The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton -- a sneakily sympathetic story of high-school outcasts -- was just so unforgettably perfect, true and beautiful that when it came time to split the vote, the choice was easy. Hail Satan. Hail Hail.

A caesura inserted sweetly into the middle of the album (Centrepeace) is just one of the architectural curlicues built into this, Damon Gough's second full-length (if you ignore the splendid About a Boy soundtrack he also produced in 2002). He's a singer/songwriter who'll pass around nuggets of wisdom, while shuffling and dissuading as if it were all half-baked nonsense. This sort of quiet daring reflects in Gough's continued fascination with structural play, chopping songs in half (I Was Wrong and, erm, You Were Right), and reprising lyrics as if they're fresh out of the bag: I'm turning Madonna down, he exhorts breezily on two separate songs. Invoking his pet goldfish in the title only doubles the sense that thinking in circles shouldn't hold back anyone with a long memory from experiencing the everyday as if for the first time.