This is now my sixth annual ranking of the top 100 songs of the year, and while I wrote yesterday on my ranking of my favorite albums of 2018 that I thought it was a down year for albums, especially ones by artists I already liked, it was still a great year for new music overall, with far more than a hundred songs I thought worthy of mention on this list. As always, this is subjective: It’s what I liked, so it’s probably not what you like, and that’s fine.

Previous lists: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012.

You can view the Spotify playlist of all 100 songs here if you can’t see the widget below.

100. YONAKA – Teach Me to Fight. This Brighton quartet made my list last year with the snarling “Wouldn’t Wanna Be Ya,” and continued this year with several more solid singles, including this similarly raucous, indignant rocker, along with another song further up the list.

99. Swervedriver – Mary Winter. Swervedriver returned a few years ago after a 17-year layoff with I Wasn’t Born to Lose You, but this track, from their next album Future Ruins, is the best thing they’ve done since 1998’s “99th Dream.”

98. HAERTS – Fighter. My second-favorite track from HAERTS’ solid yet safe second album New Compassion, a strong showcase for Nini Fabi’s voice with some urgency to the backing track.

97. whenyoung – Silverchair. This Irish trio recently dropped a cover of the Cranberries’ “Dreams,” with singer Aoife Power doing a damn good impression of Dolores O’Riordan; this song is my favorite of their original songs so far, going from an almost dissonant line in the verse to a power-pop chorus with a hook that stayed with me all year.

96. Drenge – Autonomy. The duo are now a trio, still building songs around a guitar-and-drum skeleton, but adding enough additional elements, like this song’s electronic line, to keep their sound interesting and show real growth since their sophomore album.

95. Sarah Chernoff – You’re Free. Chernoff has one of the best voices of anyone recording today, but is still looking for that breakout song to get more mainstream attention; this new single from the summer showcases her range and ability to work in different vocal styles, with a solid hook in the chorus.

94. DMA’S – Break Me. I love DMA’S’ unapologetic throwback sound to late-90s Oasis, although their newest album, For Now, had too few rockers like this one and the title track, even though it’s what this Aussie band does best.

93. Wheel – Vultures. A new Finnish prog metal band with an English lead singer, Wheel plans to release its debut album in 2019, with this single a very promising debut. I think it’s the heaviest song on my top 100, although there were certainly some good metal tracks and albums in 2018 that didn’t make it (Riverside’s “Vale of Tears” comes to mind).

92. Darlingside – Singularity. The best track from this Boston-based indie-folk group’s latest album, Extralife, buoyed by gorgeous harmonies in the chorus.

91. Are We Static – Weight of Water. Featuring a guest vocal from Talitha Rise, this latest track from these Mancunian rockers also has that late-90s Britpop vibe, a little more pop-oriented than their 2017 album Embers was.

90. Lauren Ruth Ward – Blue Collar Sex Kitten. Ward’s debut album Well, Hell made my top albums of the year post, with this sneering track, showing Ward’s smoky, powerful voice, the best on the album. It’s the song Elle King wishes she had the talent to make.

89. Jungle – Smile. One of three songs from Jungle’s For Ever to make my top 100, this track thrives on the syncopated drum riff that opens the song and competes with the vocals for primacy until the track ends.

88. Anderson .Paak – Til It’s Over. I’ve never been a fan of A.P’s music but enjoyed this soulful, two-step track both on its own and for the video/HomePod advert featuring singer FKA Twigs, directed by Spike Jonze.

87. Speedy Ortiz – Lucky 88. I liked Speedy Ortiz’s album Twerp Verse but didn’t love it; I didn’t find enough of the tracks memorable or immediate enough to keep me coming back to it. But Sadie Dupuis’ off-kilter vocal style and lyrical wit are still as endearing as ever and when she hits on a good hook, like here or “Lean In When I Suffer,” it’s still peak Speedy Ortiz.

86. Drenge – This Dance. See above. I feel like Drenge’s next album will feel more like the first record plus something than their last album, which shifted direction too abruptly and lost what made their debut so compelling.

85. Sundara Karma – One Last Night on this Earth. Sundara Karma’s sophomore album, Ulfilas’ Alphabet, drops in March; this lead single brings a strong melodic hook and their now-familiar, slightly rough around the edges sort of sound.

84. Thrice – Only Us. Thrice’s album Palms just missed my top albums list, but put two songs on this top 100; this is the slower of the two, bringing almost a doom-metal note to Thrice’s post-hardcore sound.

83. CLOVES – Hit Me Hard. I love Kaity Dunstan’s voice in any style of song, although I think ballads suit her better (like 2015’s “Frail Love,” re-recorded for her new album. This is more upbeat, more overtly dramatic, but the constant sense in her voice that she’s about to let ‘er rip helps to highlight the tension beneath the vocals and the main piano riff.

82. Body Type – Palms. This Australian quartet calls their music “scuzz // rock,” but this song is pure jangle-pop with a little distortion in the deep background, building up to a tremendous chorus that comes back at the end of the song over staggered vocals, so that three of the women are all singing at once.

81. Art Brut – Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock Out!. Never been a huge Art Brut fan, so it figures that when they write a song that, by their standards, feels like a ridiculous novelty track … but it’s also kind of fun in its own dumb way.

80. Ten Fé – Not Tonight. Ten Fé dropped this single in August, about eighteen months after their superb debut album, Hit the Light, appeared, and this is more of the same – it’s ’70s-influenced soft rock, just a little faster, a little more atmospheric, a little more timeless.

79. Acid Dad – Living with a Creature. Brooklyn psychedelia with a digital delay on the vocals to turn the whole thing into a sort of danse macabre, frantic and creepy, as if the Butthole Surfers decided to make a song you could dance to.

78. Port Noir – Old Fashioned. A Swedish trio making heavy rock with progressive elements, here with notes of groove metal, an ’80s synth line, and even hints at rap-metal in the verse (with a nod to the Beastie Boys, worth five extra points in my book).

77. Cut Chemist/Chali 2Na – Work My Mind. Cut Chemist was the primary DJ for Jurassic 5, and Chali 2Na was their strongest technical MC, so this collaboration on Cut Chemist’s solo record was a pleasant surprise, the best thing either of them has done since J5 split up.

76. The Twilight Sad – I/m Not Here (Missing Face). These Scots make being bummed out sound good, with driving keyboard and guitar riffs in minor keys to evoke a mood that’s mirrored in the simple lyrics here about the end of a relationship.

75. White Lies – Believe It. I’m not afraid to say I love ’80s new wave and alternative music, even now thirty-plus years after first discovering it on America’s Top 40 some Sunday morning. White Lies appear to share that affinity, and while their last album was lighter on hooks than 2013’s BIG TV, this lead single from their next record has a much more memorable chorus and keyboard riff to get it stuck in your head.

74. Broods – Peach. Broods became a pop act on their second album, which is a little disappointing given their quiet, pensive debut, but they do still craft some strong hooks and stick to their minimalist musical approach – although autotuning Georgia Nott’s voice ought to be a crime.

73. BILK – Spiked. A punk song about getting a spiked drink at a party. Sometimes simple is just better.

72. Belly – Shiny One. Another big comeback this year. Belly put out two albums in the early 1990s, after Tanya Donnelly left Throwing Muses, and then nothing for 23 years until this spring’s Dove, which felt like two decades had passed. The older, mellower sound wasn’t the Belly I remembered, but they did have some high points on this song and “Stars Align.”

71. YONAKA – Creature. I like Yonaka’s snarky sound, but this song lets singer Theresa Jarvis stretch out a little bit, showing a sultrier side to her voice without giving up the band’s harder rock edges.

70. Artificial Pleasure – I Need Something More. One of my favorite albums of the year, Artificial Pleasure’s The Bitter End draws on influences from post-punk to new wave to Britpop, all of which can be heard in this track, which gives me a strong Gang of Four vibe.

69. Wombats – Oceans. One of the two bonus tracks on the deluxe edition of Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, Oceans is a very unfussy Wombats tune: simple melody, memorable synth lines, witty lyrics.

68. Alkaline Trio – Blackbird. A good Alkaline Trio song – nothing we haven’t heard before a bunch of times, but still a guilty power-pop pleasure.

67. Zurich – My Protocol. I get a lot of emails from indie music promoters, and try to listen to anything that looks interesting, but the truth is most of it just doesn’t grab me in the least. Zurich’s “My Protocol” came to my attention that way, and turned out to be very much to my tastes – post-punk, anthemic, with a baritone vocalist with some swagger to his voice in a way that reminded me of White Lies’ singer. Their second EP is due out in early 2019.

66. Courtney Barnett – Charity. The best song on Barnett’s second album, Tell Me What You Really Mean, is its most rock-oriented, uptempo track. I’d say upbeat but I don’t think Barnett really does “upbeat.”

65. San Cisco – When I Dream. An acoustic number from the band behind “Awkward” and “Too Much Time Together,” one I can only hope presages a 2019 album release. They remind me a good bit of the Wombats with their sunny melodies and darker-than-you-expect lyrics, which holds true on this track.

64. The Arkells – Relentless. I usually have a few unabashed pop songs on the list every year. This is one. How can you hear that opening keyboard riff and not move your feet?

63. St. Lucia – Walking Away. I heard this and was sure Nile Rodgers was involved – that guitar riff is in his signature style. It’s the most funk-infused song St. Lucia has released to date across three albums and I think a needed expansion to his sound.

62. Maisie Peters – Best I’ll Ever Sing. How is she writing songs like this at just 18 years old? Her voice is young, but her lyrics often aren’t, and the songcraft here is that of someone twice her age. There should always be a place in the music world for a singer who can play guitar and/or piano and has something to say.

61. Bicurious – Sleep. Instrumental, experimental, heavy rock. Or maybe metal. They remind me of Battles, but without vocals and with more purpose to their songs. Their EP I’m So Confused also has a track “Fake News,” with a (doctored) sample of Donald Trump saying “I am the worst president ever!”

60. Lady Bird – Spoons. Signed by the duo Slaves to their new label Girl Fight Records, Lady Bird had the misfortune to debut just as a movie of the same name appeared on the scene. This punk-oriented track with spoken lyrics might be the most British song I’ve ever heard.

59. Johnnyswim with Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors – Ring the Bells. A folk duo from Nashville who gained notice when one of their songs became the theme to some HGTV show based in Waco, Texas, Johnnyswim collaborated with Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors here on this rousing protest anthem that sounds like something you might hear in a southern church.

58. Keuning – Restless Legs. That’s Dave Keuning of the Killers, set free of the bombastic style of Brandon Flowers to produce this modest pop gem from his debut solo album, Prismism, which has similarly simple ambitions and channels the arena rock of guitarists like Billy Squier and Ian Hunter.

57. The Beths – You Wouldn’t Like Me. The Beths’ album Future Me Hates Me appeared on a few best-of-2018 lists on the strength of the New Zealand indie-pop trio’s combination of classic vocal harmonies and punk-ish riffing.

56. Brockhampton – Honey. Critics seem to prefer other songs on the band’s album iridescence, with “San Marcos” coming up most often, but this was easily the standout for me, with strong rhyming over a pulsing beat that gives way to a psychedelic bridge with new-age chanting.

55. Ghost – Rats. I think Ghost has finally given up the Satanic trappings that made it hard to take them too seriously, so while their new album Prequelle had some missteps – let’s not talk about the lyrics to “Danse Macabre” – this song is easily the most accessible thing they’ve ever done, a perfect encapsulation of the kind of early heavy metal they’ve always emulated behind the silly masks.

54. Van William – Cosmic Sign. Van Pierszalowski of WATERS released his first full solo album , Countries, under the name Van William this year, including the earlier singles “Revolution” and “Fourth of July” as well as this folk-rock track, which makes me feel like I should be driving down an endless highway somewhere in the flat middle of the country.

53. Beth Orton & The Chemical Brothers – I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain. Orton’s voice still moves me twenty years after I first heard “Stolen Car,” and the Chemical Brothers play to her strength here, with production that manages to feel sparse even as they add layers between her vocals.

52. Interpol – The Rover. Interpol’s Marauder was a step up from El Pintor for me, still kind of uneven but with more high points, including this lead single. I think I just keep expecting them to return to the sound of their first few albums, but that’s obviously never going to happen.

51. Radkey – Rock & Roll Homeschool. The three brothers in Radkey were indeed homeschooled, and obviously listened to some punk records along the way, which shows in the title of this song (I assume a Ramones homage) and high velocity.

50. Wye Oak – Join. Wye Oak’s lo-fi sound doesn’t always hit for me – I mean, a little more fi would be okay – but their latest album, The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs, had some strong moments, including the title track and this swirling, melancholy track.

49. Young Fathers – Fee Fi. That piano riff is absolutely menacing, and one of the best examples of how Young Fathers’ experimental approach to music goes well beyond the confines of modern hip-hop.

48. Janelle Monáe – Make Me Feel. Monáe is ridiculously talented – she’s been a revelation on screen in her handful of acting appearances – but Dirty Computer felt a little mailed-in to me, certainly not the follow-up album we’ve waited five years to hear. This is the one track on the album I kept coming back to, especially because of the way that chromatic scale in the lead-up to each chorus defies your mind’s expectations, even after you’ve heard it before.

47. Hinds – Tester. Hinds are a bit of an acquired taste, since their entire appeal is how raw they sound, as if everything was recorded in a tiny garage rather than a studio, and it’s just four girls having fun with nobody listening. “Tester” might be the best distillation yet of that sound.

46. Drenge – Outside. Of all of Drenge’s singles this year, this is the one that most evoked their debut album for me, songs like “Bloodsport” and “Backwaters,” fast and loud and angry but still with a memorable hook.

45. Okkervil River – Love Somebody. It takes about 30 seconds to get going, but the way the song builds in sound and tempo as it progresses makes it my favorite OR song to date. The line “I get a tightness ’bout right here in my chest” just stuck with me the first time I heard the song.

44. Turbowolf – Cheap Magic. Turbowolf’s album is just a giant “fuck yeah” because of huge riffs like this one.

43. Unknown Mortal Orchestra – American Guilt. UMO put out two records this year – Sex & Food, a proper album released in April, and IC-01 Hanoi, a seven-track instrumental album that’s far more experimental. This track comes from the first album, built on a tremendous, heavy guitar lick that someone imported from 1972.

42. Post Animal – Ralphie. Featuring Stranger Things star Joe Keery on guitar, Post Animal released their debut album this past April, with this sunny, bouncy rocker the lead single and best track on it.

41. The Voodoo Children – Tangerines & Daffodils. Garage rock from a Nashville duo, both members of multiple other projects. It’s a real banger albeit a little too close to the Von Bondies’ 2004 hit “C’mon C’mon.”

40. Kid Astray – Joanne. Kid Astray have become regulars on my year-end lists for their consistent ability to churn out indie-pop earworms like this one, with another track from their five-song EP, Ignite, appearing further up this list.

39. Iceage – Hurrah. The first time I heard this song, I thought it was seven minutes long – not because I didn’t like it, but because the sound is so immersive that I was completely absorbed in it. If you remember the short-lived Norwegian band The Soundtrack of Our Lives, Iceage (from Denmark) builds on that group’s classic-rock sound with more of a post-punk or even post-hardcore lean.

38. Jungle – Heavy, California. Every good Jungle song sounds like a party is just getting started.

37. Soft Science – Undone. Soft Science’s album made my best-of-2018 list for its breadth; this opening track recalls My Bloody Valentine’s “I Only Said,” but with a stronger melodic foundation, comprehensible vocals, and less emphasis on the wall of noise that marked MBV’s output, instead leaning into that whinging keyboard line to turn it into something brighter.

36. Jealous of the Birds – Plastic Skeletons. Naomi Hamilton sounds like she’s reciting beat poetry over multiple guitar lines that spend the verses circling each other until they collide in the cathartic chorus.

35. Allie X – Science. Allie X’s EP Super Sunset was a mixed bag of ideas – but ideas mark her output, and I can’t fault an artist for being overly ambitious. This slower track has her usual electronica foundation but with the tempo and thumping bass line of classic R&B beneath her coquettish vocals.

34. Khruangbin – Maria También. Yep, that’s the theme to the superb Crimetown podcast’s first season (and you should listen to that if you haven’t). Khruangbin do instrumental music that combines genres from around the world, with their latest album, Con Todo El Mundo combining funk and jazz with Middle Eastern and Caribbean sounds. It’s a great trick to produce an instrumental single like this that never misses vocals for a second.

33. Everything Everything – Breadwinner. E2 are better when they go a little nuts, which is absolutely what’s happening here, the way they did back on their first two albums with songs like “Cough Cough,” “Kemosabe,” and “MY KZ UR BF.”

32. Snail Mail – Pristine. Lindsey Jordan recorded her debut album Lush at 18, although she rarely sounds close to that young, and evokes music recorded before she was even born. This was my top track from the record and reminded me most of a somewhat obscure ’90s band Lotion, who were probably best known for getting Thomas Pynchon to write the liner notes for one of their albums.

31. Sunflower Bean – Come for Me. Sunflower Bean’s album Twentytwo in Blue dropped in March, but they’re already back with a four-song EP due out in January, led by this strutting track that gets singer and occasional model Julia Cumming out in front where she belongs.

30. Wombats – Bee-Sting. The second of the two bonus tracks from Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life to make this top 100 should have been on the album proper, which has a solid six singles worthy of airplay (if anyone listened to terrestrial radio any more, that is).

29. Thrice – The Grey. Thrice get a little proggy here on this lead single from 2018’s Palms, and I love it. The opening guitar riff and off-beat drum line keep me off balance from the first few bars and it never resolves until all parts unite in the chorus.

28. Joy Williams – Canary. The former Civil Wars singer returned this fall with a few new singles ahead of her upcoming album Front Porch, led by this track that sounds like the anthem for a #MeToo march.

27. Belle & Sebastian – Show Me the Sun. If anything on How to Solve Our Human Problems (Parts 1-3) would have fit on their previous album, it’s this song, which is almost distractingly upbeat for these Scottish stalwarts – until they hit the bridge and abruptly downshift, like Hamlet walking to the edge of the stage to offer an aside to the audience.

26. Sunflower Bean – Crisis Fest. Julia Cumming channels some Debbie Harry here; in an earlier era she’d be a media darling, and maybe that’s still in her future if more people discover the reinvented post-punk Sunflower Bean have churned out through two albums and an upcoming EP. Is it terrible of me that I want Cumming to dye her eyebrows? The platinum blonde hair and dark brows looks always looks like a visual tritone to me.

25. Foxing – Nearer My God. The title track from this St. Louis band’s latest album soars on the power of the vocals, almost overshadowing the driving guitar work beneath them.

24. Gang of Four – Lucky. Granted, this isn’t really Gang of Four any more without Jon King on vocals, but this song effectively bridges that gap between their sound from Entertainment! – which turns forty (!) next year – and a more modern sound and level of production, while still raging against the machine as you’d expect Andy Gill to do.

23. Django Django – Marble Skies. The Djangos released their third record, also called Marble Skies, at the start of the year, and both this and last year’s “Tic Tac Toe” show off their ability to marry layered vocals, drum machines, and synth/guitar lines atypical for dance or electronica hits.

22. The Weeknd/Kendrick Lamar – Pray for Me. The Black Panther soundtrack was justifiably lauded on its release and has since been showered with awards praise, including eight Grammy nominations. The song getting most of that attention has been “All the Stars” (featuring SZA), rather than this, easily my favorite from the record, which really makes great use of the Weeknd’s voice over music that evokes images of water flowing or falling, a central motif in the film.

21. Spirit Animal – World War IV. The new Spirit Animal album is such a mixed bag – there are tracks that sound like Twenty One Pilots (not a compliment), and then a handful of crushers like this one that boast huge guitar riffs and traditional vocals.

20. HAERTS – New Compassion. HAERTS returned with their first album in four years, also called New Compassion, down two members and without including their best single from the interim, “Animal.” The new record has some highlights – this song, “Fighter,” “The Way” – but didn’t have the same urgency or consistent pop hooks of their debut. Nini Fabi’s voice shows off better on “Fighter” while this song has the better melody.

19. Black Honey – Midnight. Black Honey’s self-titled debut album is a cornucopia of indie-pop delights, with the deluxe edition boasting all of the great singles they’ve released over the previous two years plus new hits like this silly pop gem that shows off the quartet’s ability to craft hooks that grab you without overstaying their welcome.

18. TV AM – These Are Not Your Memories. TV AM’s album Psychic Data is mostly instrumental, and generally excellent, but this song’s huge riff, repeated on guitar and then keyboard, mirrors the pattern in the vocals as well for the album’s best track.

17. Death Cab for Cutie – Gold Rush. The best song DCFC has put out since “You Are a Tourist,” if not longer, envelops you with layer upon layer, from the backing vocal repeating the song’s title to the maracas-like percussion to the rich textures of guitar and keyboards throughout.

16. Joy Oladokun – Sober. This Arizona-born singer/songwriter had an album, Carry, that I missed back in 2016, but this one-off single shows the power of her voice, both its sound and her lyrics, with a ’70s soul vibe. I wish the song were two minutes longer so I could bask in her vocals for longer.

15. Kid Astray – Can’t Stop. The second song from their EP Ignite on my list. They really have a knack for catchy alternative-pop songs – “The Mess,” “Diver,” “Cornerstone,” “Joanne,” “The Roads,” and now this earworm over the last six years.

14. Christine & the Queens – 5 dollars. Héloïse Letissier’s 2018 album Chris received wide acclaim and is all over year-end lists for its smart approach to pop, with decades of influences apparent across the record, even when she deals with heavier or darker themes as she does here.

13. Spirit Animal – The Truth. Man, that opening guitar/drum line … just inject it right into my veins, please.

12. Young Fathers – Toy. The song is great, my favorite off their experimental hip-hop album Cocoa Sugar, but if any song this year was elevated by its video, it’s this one. It might have the album’s most straightforward rapping, although as with all Young Fathers tracks, it’s the interplay of vocals and music that makes it so compelling.

11. Wombats – Cheetah Tongue. The Wombats put three songs on this list from Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, although this is the only one that was actually on the original tracklist – the other two were bonus tracks added for Japan and the deluxe edition. (Why Japan always gets the bonus tracks is not clear to me.) Maybe this time the good stuff can last.

10. Hatchie – Sleep. The Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan passed away in January, but the year ended up full of music that showed her lasting influence on other singers in the genre, including the Crab Apples’ “Open Your Eyes,” whenyoung’s cover of “Dreams,” and pretty much everything the Australian singer-songwriter Hatchie does. Harriet Pillbeam writes dreampop songs that feel like direct descendants of the Cranberries’ debut record, including 2017’s outstanding single “Sure” and this song from her debut EP Sugar & Spice.

9. The Internet – Roll (Burbank Funk). The Internet – I mean, really, is there a less search-friendly name this side of !!! – are a five-piece neo-soul and funk project out of California who received a Grammy nomination for their 2015 album Ego Death and further praise for this year’s Hive Mind, which is too heavy on the soul and light on the funk for me. This track brings the funk, though. Give me a whole album of this and I will stop making fun of the band’s name.

8. Cœur de Pirate – Prémonition. Béatrice Martin returned to singing in her native French for her latest album, a beautiful meditation on failed relationships and poor choices, highlighted by this one true pop track that gives the album its brightest moment.

7. Childish Gambino – This is America. NPR’s top song of the year and the moment when Donald Glover became President, “This is America” hit hardest because of its shocking video, which only served to accentuate what he’s already saying in the lyrics about gun violence in the United States and police brutality against African-Americans.

6. The DMA’s – For Now. This is the sound I want from Britpop revivalists who drank deeply of Oasis’s discography and recast it with just modest modifications for 2018. The opening riff sucks me in every time, like water swirling towards a drain, into a song that feels like it should never end.

5. Lemaitre featuring Betty Who – Rocket Girl. This song deserved a far wider audience than it received, although I don’t think either artist here was well-known enough in the U.S. to propel the song out of the shadows. It’s a feminist anthem over an updated disco backdrop that wouldn’t be out of place on a Daft Punk record, absolutely carried by Betty Who’s powerful performance in the chorus.

4. Jade Bird – Love Has All Been Done Before. Bird just turned 21 in October, but sings like Janis Joplin and writes like someone twice her age, comfortably moving here between twee-folk and a harder chorus that suits the raspy character in her voice when she really belts it out.

3. Frank Turner – 1933. Don’t go mistaking your house burning down for the dawn.

2. Turbowolf featuring Mike Kerr – Domino. If this sound is a bit familiar, it’s probably because that’s Mike Kerr of Royal Blood bringing his distinctive bass-with-octave-pedal to Turbowolf’s already heavy psychedelia for a song that just absolutely fucking rocks from the first chord to the last.

1. Jungle – Happy Man. It was worth the four years wait for this song, which is Jungle at their absolute best, a song that simultaneously sounds like you heard it on a Soul Train rerun from 1979 and like it was just recorded last week. Revisiting the same theme of empty materialism they covered on “Busy Earnin,” Jungle employ their now signature layered falsetto vocals over a minimalist funk jam that seems better with each listen.

It was a year of huge disappointments, with albums from CHVRCHES and Arctic Monkeys that fell far short of their previous highs – or even their previous lows. Even Judas Priest returned with an album of one good song and a bunch of tracks that just made them sound old. HAERTS finally made it back, but their second album was just solid, nowhere close to the revelation of their debut. St. Lucia’s return was sort of in between his tremendous, unabashedly poppy first album and the inexplicable follow-up. A number of highly acclaimed albums (Mitski comes to mind) did absolutely nothing for me – and let’s not even talk about how the 1975 have suddenly become critical darlings.

In the midst of the wreckage there were a few albums I enjoyed, although I have to admit my little gimmick of pushing the list’s length to the last two digits of the year is getting harder as I go. Some other albums I did like, just not enough for the list, include the Black Panther soundtrack, Alkaline Trio’s Is This Thing Cursed?, Interpol’s Marauder, Khruangbin’s Con Todo El Mundo, Cœur de Pirate’s en cas de tempête, ce jardin sera fermé, Thrice’s Palms, Hinds’ I Don’t Run, Van William’s Countries, and Iceage’s Beyondless.

Previous years’ album rankings: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013.

18. Pinkshinyultrablast – Miserable Miracles. Formerly a shoegaze band, this St. Petersburg (Russia, not the one with the baseball tomb) trio made a hard left into spacey, electronica-heavy dream pop on their third album, which didn’t have a standout track for me (maybe the lead single, “Dance AM”) but works better as a cohesive listen across its nine tracks and 37 minutes.

17. Jorja Smith – Lost & Found. Shortlisted for this year’s Mercury Prize – which went to Wolf Alice’s sophomore album, a record I found very disappointing – Smith’s debut record blends her soulful voice with classic R&B sounds and contemporary electronic elements. Her vocal style reminds me of part Alicia Keys, part Erykah Badu, with her English accent seeping through at times. The album works well as a whole, rather than for individual singles, but I’d recommend the title track, “Teenage Fantasy,” and “The One.”

16. Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel. The Australian singer/songwriter’s sophomore album was less hook-filled than her debut, but her lyrics remain a highlight throughout, and her laconic delivery remains unique even in a music world where every other singer is trying to carve out her own distinct style. Highlights include “Charity,” “City Looks Pretty,” and “Nameless, Faceless.”

15. Django Django – Marble Skies. A bit of a return to form for the lads who were shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2012 after their debut album had a global hit with “Default,” here featuring a handful of radio-worthy singles, including the title track, “Tic Tac Toe” (released in 2017), “Surface to Air,” and “In Your Beat.” Their style of electronica doesn’t always crank up the BPM, often tending to minimal arrangements and layered vocals; the closing track, “Fountains,” has a simple vocal line, a drum machine, and maybe someone’s little Casio keyboard, but still manages to craft a compelling melody and enough depth to the sound so it doesn’t sound like your teenaged neighbor’s demo tape.

14. Belle & Sebastian – How to Solve Our Human Problems (Parts 1-3). Originally released as three EPs before the band packaged them together as one fifteen-song album, this Belle & Sebastian record is truly all over the place in style, format, even feel, a retrenching after the poppy Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance but still boasting some big hooks on songs like “The Girl Doesn’t Get It,” “Show Me the Sun,” “The Same Star,” “We Were Beautiful,” and the throwback closer “Best Friend.” Some tracks here just don’t work (“Cornflakes” comes to mind), but the positives outweigh the negatives.

13. Toundra – Vortex. This progressive instrumental metal band from Madrid released their fifth album this year, the first that didn’t have a Roman numeral as its title. Other metal albums I liked in 2018: Tribulation’s Down Below, Riverside’s Wasteland, Horrendous’s Idol, High on Fire’s Electric Messiah, and the fascinating Stranger Fruit from Zeal & Ardor, who blend Negro spirituals with blackened death metal.

12. Lauren Ruth Ward – Well, Hell. The last album on this list I heard this year, even though it came out back in May, Ward’s debut record showcases her smoky voice as she goes from slithering on the opener “Staff Only” to sultry on “Make Love to Myself” to snarling on the LP’s best track, “Blue Collar Sex Kitten.” She’s an openly queer singer who sings a lot about being openly queer, about coming to terms with her sexuality and being comfortable in her own skin. It’s a record deserving of a lot more attention than it’s received, especially given the (deserving) critical acclaim for Courtney Barnett, who produces similarly thoughtful lyrics and slides between indie-rock genres.

11. CLOVES – One Big Nothing. Kaity Dunstan finally dropped her full-length debut, three years after “Frail Love,” which appears on this record, made my year-end top 10. Her voice is stunning, even with some of her quirky intonations, although I think she’s best suited to minimalist songs that bring her vocals to the front, regardless of tempo. This includes a re-recorded version of “Frail Love” as well as “Bringing the House Down” and “Don’t You Wait.”

10. Artificial Pleasure – The Bitter End. They made my top 100 last year with “Wound Up Tight,” an upbeat dance/rock number that appears here after the slamming opener “I Need Something More” and takes us into the frenetic “All I Got,” a trio of high-energy songs that sound like someone rebooted The Human League and shot them full of coke. They dial the energy down on a few tracks, as in “On a Saturday Night” – for these guys, the drop in tempo makes it sound like a dirge – but most of this record gets the right blend of darkwave and danceable rhythms. The six-minute track “People Get Everywhere” even veers into a little classic funk for a perfect change of pace in the middle of the album.

9. Snail Mail – Lush. Lindsey Jordan recorded this when she was just 18, and it’s been all over best-of lists; Pitchfork and Paste both placed it fifth on their year-end lists, and it appeared on rankings by the Guardian, AV Club, and NPR. Her vocals might be an acquired taste, but her music feels surprisingly timeless for someone so young – something you’d hear on college radio in virtually any decade, varying just by the quality of production, although women singing and playing this kind of indie-rock is a more modern phenomenon. “Pristine” is the breakout single, although “Heat Wave” and “Golden Dream” are also strong.

8. Sunflower Bean – Twentytwo in Blue. Well, when one of your band members is a dead ringer for a young Bob Dylan, I guess you lean into it and title your sophomore album as an homage to “Tangled Up in Blue.” Their second record is tighter than their first, with better songwriting and a little more swagger on tracks like “Burn It,” “Crisis Fest,” and “Human For,” and more purpose to slower tracks like “Twentytwo” and closer “Oh No, Bye Bye,” which sounds like a lost track by the Church.

7. Soft Science – Maps. Soft Science’s third album was the first I’d heard of their music, ten short songs with one-word titles, adding up to all of 33 minutes that run the gamut of alternative music styles, from the smashing opener “Undone,” which redoes My Bloody Valentine for 2018 with audible vocals, to mid-90s Lush-like Britpop on “Breaking,” to ethereal post-new wave on “Diverging,” on to the country-tinged closer “Slip.” There isn’t a bad track in the mix, which is a rare thing in our era of two good songs and 45 minutes of filler; if anything, I find myself wishing the record were longer whenever I finish it.

6. Jungle – For Ever. Jungle first appeared on my 2014 year-end top 100 with “Busy Earnin’,” their debut single, but the rest of the album fell a little flat to me, lacking enough bangers to balance out the slower tempo neo-soul stylings of the remainder of the record. Their second album strikes that balance much more effectively, with plenty of upbeat, ’70s R&B/dance numbers like “Heavy, California,” “Happy Man,” “Smile,” and “Beat 54 (All Good Now)” along with slower jams like “Cherry” and the orchestral “House in LA.”

5. Wombats – Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life. The fourth full-length from the wry post-Britpoppers was a bit short on hit singles, but the extended version, which included two bonus tracks I loved (“Bee-Sting” and “Oceans”), ended up with a solid half-dozen above-average songs, which is rare for me to find. The album also includes 2017’s “Turn” and “Lemon to a Knife Fight” as well as this year’s “Cheetah Tongue,” but there are a few absolute duds on here, which was definitely not true for their previous album, Glitterbug.

4. Turbowolf – The Free Life. Hard rock with occasional electronic elements from a Bristol quartet that seem delightfully anachronistic in their willingness to just rock out – similar in feel to The Darkness but not in sound. This album, their third, features “Domino,” “Cheap Magic,” and “No No No,” but most of the songs just flat-out rock.

3. Black Honey – Black Honey. The Brighton indie-pop quartet’s debut album was several years in the making, but the deluxe edition, which has 21 tracks now includes all the singles I’ve recommended over the last four years – “Midnight,” “Bad Friends,” “I Only Hurt the Ones I Love,” “Hello Today,” “Crowded City,” “Somebody Better,” and “All My Pride.”

2. TVAM – Psychic Data. Electronica, mostly instrumental, almost entirely weird … except every once in a while Joe Oxley, who records as TVAM, slips in an utterly memorable hook, as on my favorite track from the record, “These Are Not Your Memories,” or on the searing “Porsche Majeure,” or the massive six-minute closer “Total Immersion,” which feels like a huge hit in 1986 in an alternate universe where new wave spawned another generation of rock musicians.

1. Young Fathers – Cocoa Sugar. The winners of the 2014 Mercury Prize returned with their best album yet, a genre-busting album with hip-hop elements that rest on a lo-fi foundation of neo-soul, dub, and experimental music. Pigeonholing these guys as a rap act does them and the genre a disservice, and since their debut album, Dead, they’ve moved even further into experimental territory, often dispensing with traditional song structures while playing with textures and sounds. Some songs have little to no rap content; some mix noises you might associate with late ’80s industrial music into lo-fi electronic jams. “Toy” was a modest breakout single thanks to a clever video, while “Fee Fi” isn’t far behind thanks to the menacing tone of the repeated piano riff. Sometimes my album of the year is comfortable, something I just enjoy start to finish because it’s full of strong melodies or reminds me of a particular style of music from when I was younger. Cocoa Sugar is the opposite: It’s great because it makes me so uncomfortable, diverging constantly from what I expect and from the confines of conventional popular music with which I grew up.

Better late than never, I hope: here’s my somewhat delayed ranking of my top albums of 2017. I thought it was a good year on the album front, better than 2016, including a lot of albums that I’d say I liked halfway – records with maybe two to four really good songs on them but that couldn’t sustain it through the deeper tracks – and twenty-odd records good enough for me to consider here. You can also see my ranking of the top 100 songs of 2017 for reference.

Other albums I liked but didn’t rank: White Reaper, Wavves, Ride, Queens of the Stone Age, Japandroids.

Previous years’ album rankings: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013.

17. Afghan Whigs – In Spades. I had missed the Whigs’ comeback album in 2014, but this year’s release delivered in the same way, a more mature, refined sound without losing that essential energy that made them indie darlings in the 1990s.

16. Phoenix – Ti Amo. I thought 2013’s Bankrupt! was a huge letdown after their Grammy-winning Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, but this year’s album, the band’s tribute to Italian disco music, was a bit of a bounceback, not quite up to their magnum opus’s heights but a stronger record throughout with more memorable singles, including the title track and “J-Boy.”

15. Akercocke – Renaissance in Extremis. I’d long thought of this British extreme metal act as something of a joke, as they seemed more interested in causing controversy with their black-metal lyrics and album covers than in writing great music … but this album, released after a decade-long breakup, is a masterpiece of highly technical death metal. I could do with fewer blast beats, but that’s just the price of entry for the genre. Other metal albums I liked in 2017 that didn’t make the list included Pallbearer’s Heartless and Satyricon’s Deep Calleth Upon Deep.

14. WATERS – Something More!. Van Pierszalowski’s group returns with a record full of concise power-pop tunes, putting two songs on my top 100 along with several other great tracks like “Molly is a Babe” and “Modern Dilemma.”

13. Washed Out – Mister Mellow. Ernest Greene’s third record is my favorite of his so far, still a bit uneven, but that’s because there are almost too many ideas on the album. This also landed two songs on my top 100, and I’d also recommend “Floating By” and “Burn Out Blues.”

12. Hundred Waters – Communicating. Not quite up to the level of their debut The Moon Rang Like a Bell, Communicating works more as an expansion of the band’s unusual sound than as a collection of singles. “Particle,” “Wave to Anchor,” “Prison Guard,” “Blanket Me,” and the title track are all highlights, but I think this record is best enjoyed as a listen straight through.

11. Quicksand – Interiors. There were some great comeback albums this year from bands that hadn’t released records in over twenty years, including releases from Ride and Slowdive, but none surprised me more than Quicksand’s Interiors, which put two songs on my top 100 in “Fire This Time” and “Illuminant” and is a tremendous document of a band that hasn’t lost its signature sound yet has also matured, at least on record, during its 22-year absence.

10. Ten Fe – Hit the Light. This album is almost too anachronistic to find an audience in 2017, as the band’s indie-pop sound has a soft-rock vibe that would have been right at home in the 1970s or early 1980s. They had one song on my 2016 list, “Overflow,” that’s on this album, plus two more on this year’s list, “Twist Your Arm” and “In the Air,” with “Elodie” and “Turn” also highlights.

9. Death from Above – Outrage! Is Now. A bit like Royal Blood with a little more dance/rhythm sensibility … or maybe Sleigh Bells with some actual sense of melody … but man does it work, a huge step forward from their previous record. Pitchfork describes them as “dance-punk,” but I don’t hear that at all; they’re too polished to be punk, too hard-edged to be dance, but live somewhere in the grey areas between multiple genres. DfA had two songs on my top 100 this year, “Freeze Me” and “Never Swim Alone,” while “Nomad” and “Statues” are also strong.

8. Mastodon – Emperor of Sand. My favorite Mastodon album to date, with some more accessible tracks that don’t sacrifice any of the group’s trademark progressive-metal sound. “Show Yourself” is their most radio-friendly single ever, but “Steambreather,” “Sultan’s Curse,” and “Andromeda” are high points. Lest you think they’ve gone straight commercial, the album ends with an eight-minute epic track for the diehards.

7. Royal Blood – How Did We Get So Dark? “Lights Out” made my top ten, but unlike their debut record, this album has more good ideas than just the one that powers the lead single; “Hook, Line & Sinker” made my top 100, and I also keep going back to “Hole in Your Heart” and “Where Are You Now?” I did think the second single, “I Only Lie When I Love You,” was below the media on the album, but no one consults me on these decisions.

6. Daughter – Music from Before the Storm. I don’t think I’ve ever included a soundtrack on any of my year-end lists, but this record, recorded for a video game that was released in September, works extremely well on its own, a dense, atmospheric listen that molds Daughter’s dream-pop sound around a core idea to produce a compelling listen straight through. “Burn It Down” was my favorite track, but this record is much better enjoyed as a whole than in pieces.

5. INHEAVEN – INHEAVEN. The second-best debut album of the year for me, a record full of bombastic, old-fashioned heavy rock tracks that harken back to ’90s grunge, ’70s hard rock, and even earlier, led by “World on Fire” and “Bitter Town.”

4. New Pornographers – Whiteout Conditions. Do we just take A.C. Newman & Co. for granted at this point? This album sank with nary a trace, but it carried forward the tremendous pop sensibility of its predecessor, 2014’s Brill Bruisers, and I thought was a little better off for the absence of Dan Bejar, whose sound never quite melded with the rest of the group’s. The title track, “High Ticket Attractions,” and “Darling Shade” all made my top 100.

3. Sløtface – Try Not to Freak Out. These Norwegian punk-popsters first appeared on my radar with their 2016 EP Empire Records, and from there released a steady stream of great singles with witty, clever lyrics beyond their years. “Backyard,” “Pitted,” and “Nancy Drew” made my top 100, with “Magazine” a near miss, and there really aren’t any duds on the record at all.

2. Portugal. the Man – Woodstock. “Feel It Still” was my #1 song of the year, with two more songs on my top 100 and three more that I strongly considered (“Live in the Moment,” “Rich Friends,” “Tidal Wave”). I liked the sheer ambition of 2011’s In the Mountain In the Cloud, but it wasn’t until this record that Portugal. the Man converted their big ideas into a set of accessible pop gems that could give them mainstream success.

1. Beck – Colors. Featuring my #1 song of 2015, “Dreams,” plus three songs from this year’s list, and really just one song I would say I don’t like (“Wow” doesn’t really fit this record’s exuberance), this was an easy call for my top album of 2017. Beck is such a musical genius that he can go from 2014’s maudlin Morning Phase to this record’s enormously textured, uptempo, worldly sound and still maintain his essential … um, Beck-ness. Even when he produces something I don’t care for, I can still appreciate the brilliance behind it. Colors, however, is a masterpiece, probably my favorite album of his thirteen to date, the best representation of his complex, imaginative sound so far.

The last few years I’ve ranked a number of albums equal to the last two digits of the year, so I should have been due for a top 16 albums list for 2016 … but I can’t do it. I just couldn’t find that many albums I could truly recommend as complete listens, records that were mostly good from start to finish, as opposed to albums that had three great songs (Jagwar Ma’s Every Now and Then) but had a lot of filler.

I’ve always slipped one metal album on to the list for fellow fans of the heavy stuff; the best metal record I heard this year was Kodama (amazon • iTunes) by French shoegaze-metalers Alcest, six songs, mostly long ones, that create a cohesive sound that carries over shifting tempos and movements and the occasional death growl. It was just a fair year in metal, I think, with a lot of well-known artists releasing albums that were pretty ho-hum (looking at you, Metallica and Megadeth). Other favorites of mine this year: Gojira’s Magma, Entombed AD’s Dead Dawn, Omnium Gatherum’s Grey Heavens, Animals As Leaders’ The Madness of Many, Dark Tranquility’s Atoma, and two I’ll suggest with reservations – Cobalt’s Slow Forever, which is brilliant musically but marred by screeched vocals a la Obituary; and Astronoid’s Air, kind of like shoegaze-death metal with clean, often harmonized vocals, but lacking much in the way of hooks.

You can see my ranking of the top 100 songs of 2016, which I posted last week and informs this list as well.

10. Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool (amazon • iTunes). I mean, it’s a Radiohead album, so it’s brilliant and intricate and slightly experimental, but it’s also on the ambient, ethereal side of things, which, as a fan of their first three albums, I find a bit disappointing. There are two standout tracks here, “Burn the Witch” and “Desert Island Disk,” but there are plenty of other worthwhile moments on the album (like the two-step drumbeat that underlies “Identikit”) and nothing truly unlistenable.

9. Wire – Nocturnal Koreans (amazon • iTunes). Barely an album at 26 minutes for eight songs, it’s essentially the discarded tracks from their 2015 self-titled album, but cleaned up with better production, and the result is a distillation of Wire’s best sounds, musically and technically.

8. The Coral – Distance Inbetween (amazon • iTunes). In a year when the Stone Roses dropped two singles in an unexpected comeback, their brand of blues-heavy psychedelic rock was done better on two albums that landed in my top ten, including this one. The Coral seemed on the verge of dissolution after losing two key members in the last few years, but this album sees them back to their mid-aughts heyday of driving, throwback rock, including tracks like “Fear Machine,” “Chasing the Tail of a Dream,” and the opening track “Connector.”

7. Lapcat – She’s Bad (amazon • iTunes). Experimental-ish electronic music, picking up where the xx’s first album left off (an album the xx themselves seem to have forgotten), led by Cate Coslor’s sultry vocals but powered by the sparse, atmospheric synth lines behind her. They’re apparently big Portishead fans and the influence is clear on “She’s Bad,” “Lavender,” and “Nebraska.”

6. SULK – No Illusions (amazon • iTunes). This is the other Stone Roses-influenced album here, this record opens with a three-song punch that will transport you right back to “She Bangs the Drums” and “I Wanna Be Adored,” although they’re missing Ian Brown’s swagger here. Even when the melody doesn’t click, they still evoke a time and feeling with guitar lines like the one behind “Love Can’t Save You Now.”

5. White Lung – Paradise (amazon • iTunes). This album was so hyped, and I bought into it completely, that I found myself a little disappointed when it came out and it was merely very good, a 60 rather than a 70. It’s smart punk, well-informed by decades of punk-pop fusions, but “Hungry” was the only single that I thought stood out on its own, although “Kiss Me When I Bleed” and “Below” are solid too.

4. School of Seven Bells – SVIIB (amazon • iTunes). I tried not to bow too much to sentiment here, as this is the farewell record from SVIIB, whose founding member, Ben Curtis, died three years ago this month of lymphoma at age 35. His bandmate and former partner Alejandra Deheza returned to the studio a year later and completed the record they’d begun, producing an album of two parts. The first seven songs are typical SVIIB fare, dreamy electronica given texture by Deheza’s smoky, low-register vocals, mixing upbeat tempos with a clear sense of loss in the lyrics to songs like “Open Your Eyes,” “Ablaze,” and “A Thousand Times More.” Then the album closes with two ballads to rip your heart right out of your chest.

3. Thrice – To Be Everywhere is to Be Nowhere (amazon (for $5!) • iTunes). That’s Riley Breckenridge of the Productive Outs podcast and the band Puig Destroyer on drums for these post-hardcore stalwarts, whose latest album was their first in five years and something of a return to heavy rock after 2011’s Major/Minor. This hits a particular sweet spot for me, as I’ve always favored guitar-driven music, even to the point of listening to some extreme metal, but also am drawn to strong melodies and smart lyrics. “Blood on the Sand” and “Black Honey” made my top 100 but I’m also a fan of opener “Hurricane” and the angry “Death from Above.”

2. Wild Beasts – Boy King (amazon • iTunes). The best rock record of the year finds Wild Beasts coming down from their art-rock heights to produce their most accessible album to date, a disc devoted to the idea of toxic masculinity (“Now I’m all fucked up/And I can’t stand up/So I better suck it up/Like a tough guy would”). Their willingness to experiment is corraled here within normal song structures, and they’ve created hypnotic, twisted dance songs like “Alpha Female,” “Get My Bang,” and “He the Colossus” that fill out the record along with the slower but still catchy “Big Cat” and “Tough Guy.”

1. A Tribe Called Quest – We got it from Here … Thank You 4 Your Service (amazon • iTunes). Another record informed by loss – founding Tribe member Phife died in March, just as the quartet were finishing the album – this isn’t merely the best record of the year, it’s one of the best records of the century and my favorite rap album of the last twenty years. Where the Tribe were always pioneers of Afrocentric lyrics and infusing jazz and other traditionally black music into their songs, they were fundamentally about peace and personal, spiritual uplift. We Got it from Here, however, finds the Tribe seriously pissed off, and their lyrics and vocabulary reflect it – but Q-Tip, Phife, and the revenant Jarobi White are as energized as ever, dropping rhymes like they never quit, like The Love Movement never happened, like the state of Black America is more important than whatever personal feud kept them apart for almost two decades. Busta Rhymes hasn’t sounded this good since The Coming. Kendrick Lamar is here. Jack White is here. Elton Fucking John sings on this record. And there are hooks everywhere – on “The Space Program,” “We the People,” “Melatonin,” “Dis Generation,” “Ego,” and more. I didn’t see this album coming, and I don’t give any record extra points for coming from an artist I love or one that’s been gone a long time. The only flaw here was that, at sixteen songs, it probably could have been shorter, but with Phife gone, I’m happy to hear everything he recorded before he left. This is almost certainly the end of the Tribe as we knew them, but what a fucking way to go.

Others I considered that didn’t make the cut – and I listened to a LOT of albums this month to make sure I had enough of a sample to put together a list at all – included sad13’s Slugger, Bob Mould’s Patch the Sky, Jagwar Ma’s Every Now and Then, Broods’ Conscious, and Daughter’s Not to Disappear.

As with all of my music lists, this represents my personal preference. If I don’t like a song, it’s not here. That wipes out some critically-acclaimed artists’ 2016 releases entirely, including Frank Ocean, Angel Olsen, and Bon Iver. Other folks liked that stuff. I didn’t. Everything’s fine.

The top 100 playlist has all tracks ordered from 100 to 1, as usual. I have changed one thing from past years; the last three years I posted a top albums list first, and this a day later, but this year I’m saving the albums list till the following week. I started that post, realized I only had about eight albums I felt strongly about, and decided to go back and listen or re-listen to about a dozen others before writing up whatever number I can reach.

If the Spotify widget won’t display for you, you can access the playlist directly.

100. Dinosaur Jr. – Goin Down. The opening track on Dinosaur Jr.’s first album in four years, Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not, sounds very much like vintage Dino Jr, but the album ended up feeling repetitive to me … just like vintage Dino Jr. I like this song though.

99. HAELOS – Separate Lives. This British electronic trio produces music that is clearly influenced by 1990s trip-hop but manages to transcend that genre’s tendency towards, uh, music for the heavily stoned with faster beats and more pronounced melody lines on top of the spaced-out rhythm.

98. The Aces – Stuck. A one-off single from a then-unsigned quartet, this is one of the year’s best straight pop songs, effervescent without being cloying. I do wonder if they’ll have to change their name at some point to avoid confusion with the blues band of the same name, who backed up singer Little Walter and recorded a few songs on their own.

97. The Faint – Young & Realistic. A new single to promote their retrospective Capsule album, this is dark electronic indie music from the Omaha stalwarts and perhaps my favorite song of theirs since their 2004 record Wet from Birth.

96. D.A.R.K. – The Moon. A sort-of-supergroup, D.A.R.K. stands for Dolores (O’Riordan, of the Cranberries), Andy Rourke (of the Smiths), and Ole Koretsky (of … I don’t know what). Their first album, Science Agrees, came out in September, and it’s full of dark, moody songs like this one, light on melodies and not particularly sounding like either O’Riordan’s or Rourke’s old bands.

95. Preoccupations – Stimulation. Formerly known as Viet Cong, Preoccupations issued their first album under their new name this September, but their sound hasn’t changed, a meld of garage-rock sounds from the 1960s and early punk/guitar-driven new wave from the late 1970s. I like their overall sound more than I like their songs, and I do not stick around for the 10-minute tracks they have included on each album to date, but “Stimulation” shows their potential when they hit on a memorable melody.

94. Bastille – Good Grief. I assume I’m supposed to dislike this because Bastille is so popular, but guess what – it’s a great song, just like “Pompeii” was, and both pair a cheerful melody against a song about death and despair.

93. Sleigh Bells – I Can’t Stand You Anymore. Sleigh Bells have a critical and cult following of which I am not a member; I loved “Rill Rill” and got off the train before it derailed (derilled?) into noise-rock. This lead single from their album Jessica Rabbit, which just dropped a few weeks ago, does a better job of keeping Alexis Krauss’ voice out in front, and has a minimalist backing track led by a solid guitar riff without the trappings of some of their earlier, more dissonant works.

92. Spirit Animal – World War IV (To the Floor). Spirit Animal’s EP World War IV is as eclectic as this song, with bits from all different genres, in one measure drawing on 1970s funk, then shifting into an ’80s metal riff for the chorus.

91. Christine & the Queens – Tilted. This song first appeared in 2014 in French as “Christine” but was rereleased earlier this year in a mostly-English version, and the chorus is one of the year’s best earworms, not to mention the indelible image of the line “I’m doing my face/With magic marker.”

90. Cloves – Better Now. Kaity Dunstan, aka Cloves, made my top ten last year with her incredible piano-and-vocals track “Frail Love,” and is back now with this lead single from her debut album, due out at some point in 2017. Still just 20 years old, she should be a mainstream star by this point next year, based on her output to date.

89. Bear’s Den – Auld Wives. Bands with “Bear” in their names are almost as trendy as those with “White” in their names right now. This London duo seems to have drunk heavily on darker, gothic music since their first album of Mumford-esque folk-pop, although “Auld Wives” was the only real standout from their sophomore album.

88. Descendents – Victim of Me. I wanted to love Hypercaffium Spazzinate, the Descendents’ first album since 2004, but I just kind of liked it; it’s older, wiser (one song is called “No Fat Burger”), but a little tamer too. I still like their general sound, a poppier take on classic punk that isn’t sanitized like Green Day’s commercialized version.

87. Atomic Tom – Someone to Love. A soaring new-new-wave track that gave me a-ha flashbacks, but in a good way, with the same kind of huge energy as that branch of ’80s synth-pop, but with more guitars and less artificiality.

86. Animal Collective – Golden Gal. The song opens with a sample from the show Golden Girls, which has somehow come back around to cult popularity – if you’ve ever been in a Big Gay Ice Cream shop, you’d think the show never fell out of favor – but it’s a good example of how AC’s Painting With showed them dabbling more in conventional song structures without losing their inherently experimental style that made them distinctive in the first place. “FloriDaDa” is the best song on the album but appeared on my top 100 last year.

85. Wire – Numbered. Think of a number … Wir(e) sound remarkably young on Nocturnal Koreans, their 15th album, coming out more than 38 years after their first record Pink Flag introduced the world to “Three Girl Rhumba,” to which this new track alludes in multiple ways. Wire remain cynical post-punksters who seem to drop melodies almost in spite of themselves, and their latest album, only 26 minutes long, was one of the year’s best.

84. Daughter – No Care. Daughter’s album Not to Disappear tended more towards lugubrious quietcore, but this one track brings a manic, angry energy that breaks up the album. The way the song seems about to careen out of control puts the lie to its title and chorus, as if the lady, singer Elena Tonra, doth protest too much.

83. The Wans – Run Baby Run. A hard-rock trio from Nashville with some blues or even country underpinnings, like the Black Keys did a few lines and got angry. This is meant as a compliment.

82. Kate Nash – Good Summer. I miss the lyricist behind “Foundations,” but I still love Nash’s voice and she has a knack for crafting a pop hook, even though this bit of candy veers towards bubblegum more than I’d like.

81. Black Honey – All My Pride. This female-fronted post-punk act from the UK appears twice on my list, not including the song “Black Honey” by a completely different band. If you were into White Lung, who also appear here, you’d like Black Honey, which has a similar vibe with maybe 10% less rage.

80. Lucius – Pulling Teeth. Lucius are weird, practically a walking stereotype of Brooklyn hipster musicians, but they had a huge year in 2016, with an album in March, Good Grief, that had a couple of outstanding singles on it, and this track from an upcoming 10″ along with “The Punisher.” If you can get past the superficial stuff, Lucius actually produces some really novel pop sounds that draw upon many different eras going back to the 1950s.

79. Broods – Free. I could listen to Georgia Nott sing just about anything – and she’s not too hard on the eyes either – but this duo’s new album marked a significant change in direction from their debut record, which made my top albums of 2014, bringing bigger production values, more electronic elements behind her vocals, and a clear right turn towards commercial pop. I worry they’ve lost a little of what made their debut special to try to appeal to a broader audience, but two core facets are still here – Nott’s voice and strong vocal melodies.

78. The Big Pink – Hightimes. Nothing will ever match “Dominos,” but this was a solid return from The Big Pink after years of meh singles that followed their kick-the-doors-down debut track.

77. Mt. Si – Oh. This new project from Sarah Chernoff of Superhumanoids, an absolutely superb vocalist, dropped a four-track EP in February that showcases her voice with sparser electronic backing than she’d get with her regular gig.

76. Halsey – Castle. Halsey’s everywhere thanks to that awful song she did with the Chainsmokers – who are on my short list for Worst Artists of 2016 along with Twenty-One Pilots and DNCE – but this track, released as a single this spring thanks to its inclusion in the dud film The Huntsman, is both a great showcase for her voice’s smoky qualities and the swirling melody in the chorus.

75. Grimes – Medieval Warfare. A mediocre Grimes song is still better than a good song by a lot of other artists; this track, which sounds like a B-side from a single off Art Angels, appeared on the Suicide Squad soundtrack.

74. Hey Violet – Brand New Moves. Get used to this group, as I think they’re about to break through as a pure-pop act aimed at teenaged listeners, with their abysmal “Guys My Age” already getting some airplay and their label the new one formed by the 5 Seconds of Summer boybanders. “Brand New Moves,” the title track from their latest EP, is by far their most sophisticated song, with elements of R&B and even some darkwave distinguishing it from the pure-pop crowd.

73. of Montreal – it’s different for girls. If you can handle Kevin Barnes’ idiosyncratic vocal delivery – before I knew this band was from Athens, Georgia I assumed they were from another country – of Montreal creates some compelling experimental pop music, sometimes exasperating but sometimes clicking, as it does on this comical semi-feminist track.

72. Lush – Out of Control. A very quiet comeback from these early 1990s shoegazers who had a brief moment in the sun with their modest alternative hit single “Ladykiller” back in 1995, but one that found Lush moving back to its Spooky/Split roots.

71. Chairlift – Romeo. Their best song to date, “Ch-Ching,” made my top 10 of 2015; the album Moth didn’t quite live up to the expectations set by the lead single, but this was the second-best track on the record.

70. Regina Spektor – Grand Hotel. Just vocals and piano, with Spektor managing to craft something of a story, heavy on physical imagery, about a hotel that has a direct connection to the underworld.

69. Dawes – When the Tequila Runs Out. This has a little bit of a novelty-hit feel to it, but I’m not averse to novelty hits if they’re smart and still catchy.

68. Wild Beasts – Tough Guy. Get used to this band, as they’re going to show up again on this list; Boy King was the best rock album of the year. Wild Beasts was always an experimental outfit, a la alt-J or Everything Everything, but on this latest album they toned down a little bit of the madness to create more compact, accessible songs that are still way out of the mainstream.

67. Thrice – Black Honey. Another of my favorite albums of the year, Thrice’s post-hardcore To Be Everywhere is to Be Nowhere had a bunch of standout tracks, including this one, the complex opener “Hurricane,” and one more song higher up this list. I feel like Thrice has taken up the mantle of bands like Clutch or Corrision of Conformity fell off, making music that clearly descends from hardcore but works with slower tempos and real hooks. Full disclosure: I know their drummer, and perhaps so do you, as it’s Riley Breckinridge of the Productive Outs podcast.

66. The Struts – Kiss This. I like this song. Don’t @ me.

65. Black Map – Run Rabbit Run. This group’s members are all parts of other bands I’ve never heard of, so forgive me if I balk at Wikipedia (which is never wrong) terming them a “supergroup.” This is an extremely catchy hard-rock song with a real bluesy riff underpinning it.

64. Banks & Steelz – Giant. So many of these rap/rock partnerships turn out to be disasters that I was shocked when this one – Paul Banks of Interpol and RZA of Wu-Tang Clan – produced a couple of decent songs, including this one, which is probably the strongest rap performance I heard from RZA on this record. Ghostface Killah also appears on the lead single, “Love + War,” although I found the chorus to that song really week.

63. Leagues – Dance with Me. This Nashville outfit had a couple of minor hits in 2013 with “Spotlight” and “You Belong Here” and returned this fall with Alone Together, which has a similar sound that blends indie and electronic sounds with alt.country tempos and riffing. I like their way of bringing those styles together, as it’s less cloying than other bands that try to mash them up into something pop, but Leagues hasn’t found the commercial success they deserve yet.

62. Car Seat Headrest – Fill in the Blank. So everyone comments on the funny intro to this song, which sounds like a college student on the campus radio station announcing the next song, which is by some artist she’s never heard of so she has to look it up. I think that’s genuinely funny … the first time. And then it’s never funny again. I also was totally underwhelmed by this album, which is making a lot of folks’ top ten lists for the year, between Will Toledo’s whiny voice and the fact that it sounds like it was recorded in a storage locker. That’s a lot of words about not liking Car Seat Headrest, but I think this song has a good hook.

61. Hippo Campus – Boyish. Minnesota indie-rockers who sound nothing like Prince, which I thought was illegal if you were from the Twin Cities or something. The pairing of the keyboard line and the vocal melody gives this song its most persistent hook, more than the call-and-response act in the chorus. Their debut album, Landmark, is due out on February 24th.

60. Suede – Outsiders. Anderson, Oakes, and company have put out a couple of solid albums the last couple of years for an unexpected second act that will never match their “Metal Mickey” heyday but brings some lyrical and musical maturity to their Britpop roots, even hitting the top ten in the UK. There’s a real sense of yearning and loss in a lot of songs from these two records, as on “Outsiders,” which marries some great guitar work from Oakes with melancholy vocals from Anderson.

59. Temples – Certainty. Temples’ second album is due out in March, with this as the teaser first single, driven by an organ riff after the chorus that reminds me of the earliest output of the Charlatans and their own reliance on a Hammond organ on their debut record.

58. Sad13 – <2. That’s Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz, who have a song much further up this list; she issued her solo debut, Slugger, this summer, and it sounds a lot like Speedy Ortiz’s two albums to date, which is a good thing – melody and anti-melody, often using dissonant sounds, vocals that seem to be fighting the music at times but always manage to come together by the end of the song. If anything, “<2” is a bit more melodic than the best Speedy Ortiz songs (like “Tiger Tank”), but if you liked her work before the solo album you’re going to like this.

57. The Kills – Doing It to Death. It’s not quite “Sour Cherry,” but what is? Jamie Hince’s guitar work is really the star of the song, even overshadowing Alison Mosshart’s vocals when the latter are mixed toward the front of the track.

56. Jagwar Ma – Give Me a Reason. Jagwar Ma are an Australian indie-pop trio, and they’re only “indie” in the sense that they haven’t really broken through yet – this is great, smart, complex music that would fit in fine on pop radio except for the fact that it’s better than almost everything else on those stations. “Give Me a Reason” sounds like a lost Madchester track that’s been remastered but would rank among the best songs by the Happy Mondays or the Inspiral Carpets.

55. ELEL – Animal. This eight-member outfit finally released their first full-length album, Geode this fall, including their minor hit “40 Watt” from last year and this song, my favorite from them to date, which encapsulates their mixture of soul and Caribbean rhythms into typical rock song structures.

54. Hundred Waters – Forgive Me for Giving Up. Hundred Waters had my #1 album of 2014, then released this one-off single this year, along with a very weird remix of their song “Show Me Love” that included Chance the Rapper. (I didn’t like it.) This song is more like HW’s other output, using Nicole Miglis’s potent vocals as another layer of melody.

53. White Lies – Come On. This is unapologetic ’80s new wave revival music, one of the two best tracks on their October album Friends, along with “Don’t Want to Feel It All.”

52. Nani – I Am Volcano. They describe themselves as “manic-wave,” but this sounds like very early post-punk to me, like what Siouxie Sioux might have produced had she stayed in a more guitar-driven direction than going towards what would become new wave. I think this is a band to watch.

51. Jeff Beck – Live in the Dark. Yes, that’s the Jeff Beck, the 72-year-old guitar virtuoso and author of the song “Constipated Duck.” His Loud Hailer was his first album in six years, and he hasn’t lost anything as a guitarist or author of memorable licks. Singer Rosie Bones (of the London duo Bones, with guitarist Carmen Vandenburg, who also appears on this album) can get in the way of Beck’s work sometimes, but on “Live in the Dark” her deep, bluesy vocals complement his work and turn what he’s called a “guitar nerd” sort of track into a viable radio single.

50. The Temper Trap – Fall Together. TT’s best song since their 2008 hit “Sweet Disposition” also carries a big chorus and anthemic feel tailor-made for playing to a big stadium crowd in their home country of Australia.

49. The Coral – Fear Machine. I thought the Coral’s album Distance Inbetween was one of the best of the year, and a criminally underheard rock record that particularly satisfies me as someone who grew up on the hard rock of the ’70s and ’80s but bailed on the stylized, overproduced groove and rap-metal acts of the 1990s. The Coral quaffed deeply on what was called metal in the 1970s and this song grooves in a way that so-called “groove metal” doesn’t. Recommended if you like Band of Skulls.

48. Last Shadow Puppets – Bad Habits. LSP’s surprise second album left me pretty cold other than this one single, and even this isn’t close to “Standing Next to Me,” the glorious throwback single from their first album. Alex Turner is capable of better.

47. Trashcan Sinatras – Let Me Inside (Or Let Me Out). I loved the first two albums from these Scottish folk-rockers, which produced alternative hits like “Obscurity Knocks” and “Hayfever” (the latter featured in a Beavis and Butthead episode). Wild Pendulum, their first album in seven years, leans more towards the folkier side of their sound, but the first three songs on the album have a little more energy to them, like their best singles from their 1990s period did.

46. School of Seven Bells – Ablaze. The farewell album from SVIIB was finished after the death of member Benjamin Curtis, who recorded with partner Alejandra Deheza up until a few months before leukemia ended his life; Deheza returned to the studio after taking over a year away from music and completed the album, which is a tremendous, emotional record in its own right, and a fitting tribute to Curtis. SVIIB never broke through as they deserved, but I hope this album will find its audience in time given the presence of several great singles and the crushing suite of ballads that closes the record.

45. FREAK – Nowhere. I wrote in November’s playlist how FREAK has been compared to Nirvana, but I don’t hear that as much as I hear Drenge and Royal Blood and other stripped-down British garage-rock acts, maybe with a little more hard-rock edge to it.

44. KONGOS – Take It From Me. The South African (by way of Arizona) quartet behind the 2012 hit “Come With Me Now” put out a presciently-titled album called Egomaniac this summer, featuring more of their kwaito-infused rock; this received moderate airplay but I thought it was the best song and most radio-friendly single from that full-length.

43. Stone Roses – All for One. It’s not vintage Stone Roses – if it were, it would probably be in my top five – mostly because someone seems to have emasculated Ian Brown between Solarized and his reunion with John Squire, whose guitar work sounds pretty much as it did in his abortive efforts with the Seahorses.

42. Corinne Bailey Rae – Stop Where You Are. Rae’s first album in six years, The Heart Speaks in Whispers, was a welcome return for one of the most beautiful voices in music, absent since the album she recorded after her husband’s death in 2008.

41. Van William – Revolution. Van Pierszalowski of WATERS recorded two songs as Van William this year, with help from First Aid Kit on this folky track, although it’s still very clearly the same voice (literally and figuratively) behind WATERS’ hooks and lyrics. Full disclosure: Van’s a Dodgers fan and a fan of third-wave coffee, like I am, and we’ve chatted about both a number of times over the last year-plus, so I won’t pretend to be objective here.

40. SULK – Black Infinity (Upside Down). It’s a better Stone Roses song than either of the songs the re-formed Roses released this year, although in this case I’m talking first album Roses more than second.

39. Monica Heldal – Coulda Been Sound. Heldal’s vocals remind me of Kat Edmondson’s bubbly, evocative style, and the fingerpicked acoustic guitar here would have fit perfectly on Ben Howard’s 2011 Mercury Prize-nominated album Every Kingdom.

38. Lapcat – She’s Bad. I need to spend more time with the new album by this Swiss-American electronica trio; this title track features a hypnotic guitar line over a classic trip-hop rhythm that could easily have come off Massive Attack’s Mezzanine.

37. Ten Fé – Overflow. Still waiting for a full-length album from this new wave-ish duo, who’ve produced a couple of great singles so far in the same vein as White Lies.

36. Drowners – Pick Up the Pace. Named for a Suede song, this quartet had a couple of songs I liked in 2013 that appeared on their debut album, but this year’s On Desire was a relative letdown, sounding too derivative of their Britpop idols without enough hooks like the ones that drive the chorus and bridge of this track.

35. DMA’s – Too Soon. This Australian band sounds right out of mid-90s Britpop, to the point that Noel Gallagher (ex-Oasis) said he’d “boo them” when he saw them at an event where his new band was playing with the DMA’s. I’m over the antics of the brothers Gallagher, and the hackneyed music they put out now, but this DMA’s track does a pretty good impression of that particular moment in music time without coming off as unoriginal (the way Drowners can).

34. Sundara Karma – The Night. A British band (from Reading) whose members cite Bruce Springsteen as an inspiration, although I don’t hear that directly in this swirling, yearning song, more like a focused version of Arcade Fire’s brand of slow indie-rock.

33. Porches – Be Apart. I can be pretty harsh on songs that have this kind of sound, like a bunch of kids playing around with their first Casiotone keyboard, but man this song, from Porches’ album Pool, is just creepy as hell and that makes it great.

32. Thrice – Blood on the Sand. The best pure single off Thrice’s To Be Everywhere is Nowhere, although I think their album as a whole rewards full listens.

31. Japandroids – Near to the Wild Heart of Life. I’ve said before I wasn’t a big fan of Japandroids’ critically acclaimed 2012 Celebration Rock album, which I thought was more noise than melody and lacked the big hooks I’d expect from an album with such plaudits. This lead single and title track from their upcoming album is far more memorable, with the vocals getting more emphasis in the production as well.

30. Swet Shop Boys – Tiger Hologram. The unexpected partnership between actor Riz Ahmed (The Night Of and Rogue One) and Heems (ex-Das Racist.) produced this alternative rap gem that seems to nod to Indian music but is firmly grounded in the shorter musical lines of American hip-hop. Riz outrhymes Heems here, but it’s the repeated synth line that hooked me on this track.

29. Sløtface – Empire Records. Punk-popsters from Norway who had to change their name from Slutface because no one wanted to write about a band called Slutface. I think they’re better off this way. This is the title track from their four-song EP, with a full-length album to come in 2017.

28. Dinosaur Pile-Up – Nothing Personal. Finally released in the U.S. this year, nine months after it first appeared in their native UK, Dinosaur Pile-Up’s Eleven Eleven yielded this very Nirvana-esque rocker with a driving core riff. There’s some good heavy stuff on Eleven Eleven, like “Willow Tree” and “Anxiety Trip,” although I found their slower or lighter material more like bad grunge.

27. Frightened Rabbit – Get Out. These Scots received a lot of favorable reviews for their latest album, Painting of a Panic Attack, but I thought most of the record lacked any clear hooks or strong melodies, with the exception of this song, which perfectly balances their normal folk-rock sound (think early Belle & Sebastian) with a cathartic release in the chorus.

26. White Lung – Hungry. This Vancouver punk act seemed poised for a big breakthrough with their 2016 album Paradise, which featured a couple of strong advance singles, including this one, and very positive reviews, but it sank without a trace here in the U.S. That’s a shame, as it’s made a number of publications’ best albums of the year lists and will be on mine as well.

25. The Head & the Heart – All We Ever Knew. TH&H seem to be good for one really great song per album, which isn’t to say their other stuff is terrible, just that I find a lot of it to be repetitive, and maybe too folky for me. This song has a couple of good hooks and the violin lines in the bridge bring real textural interest to a part of the song that might have been an afterthought.

24. Yeasayer – I Am Chemistry. I stand for science, and songs about science, or songs that just make a lot of allusions to science. Also, this song is really mesmerizing to listen to.

23. Broods – Heartlines. I noted above that Broods seemed to aim for a wider audience with their sophomore album, but there’s still enough of their atmospheric sound on the record to retain me as a fan, along with Georgia Nott’s outstanding vocal work.

22. Bob Mould – Voices in My Head. Hüsker Dü’s lead singer bounced back with a surprising return to his power-pop roots on Patch the Sky, an album that fits in the space between his first band and the short-lived Sugar; it’s as if Mould can’t help but write one memorable guitar riff after another, and this song, “The End of Things,” and “Hold On” rip open the album in fine form for someone who should be thirty years past his peak.

21. Black Honey – Hello Today. God, this song makes me miss Velocity Girl.

20. Wild Beasts – Get My Bang. I could probably have stuffed five Wild Beasts songs on the top 100 but I settled for three. It’s probably sacrilegious to say a band of four British white guys is continuing the tradition of funk-electronic-pop founded by Prince, but the way they’ve amped up the bass here bears his unmistakable influence. I could even see Prince writing about toxic masculinity, the overarching theme of their album Boy King.

19. Bat for Lashes – Sunday Love. Natasha Khan, who records as Bat for Lashes, wrote an entire concept album called The Bride about a woman whose fiance is killed en route to their wedding. It’s depressing as hell. This is a beautiful song, though, even though it’s about grief.

18. HAERTS – Eva. The longest song I’ve ever included on a year-end list, this nearly eight-minute opus is really a great four-minute HAERTS song with a three-minute instrumental outro.

17. With Lions – Down We Go. Never look back, Sister Sociopath. Heavy southern blues-rock that just grooves like there’s a foot on the accelerator the whole time.

16. ATCQ – We The People. The first single from the Tribe’s triumphant final album is an angry rant about black lives not mattering, with a hint of defeat about the political climate that isn’t supporting the change we need.

15. Van William – Fourth of July. A slice of sunny acoustic pop that Van Pierszalowski released this summer, his first song under the Van William moniker, although the upbeat guitar work and the various “whoa-oh-oh-oh’s” mask some dark lyrics about losing one’s faith.

14. Gone is Gone – Violescent. A new side project featuring the lead singer of Mastodon and one of the guitarists from Queens of the Stone Age, Gone is Gone has produced a short album and a couple of singles already in the last year, music that’s a little heavier than straight stoner rock but I think not fast enough to be called metal. This song is my favorite by them to date; they take the depressed-grunge sound of Alice in Chains and tune it down, with heavier, less slick production.

13. The Naked & Famous – Higher. I’ve liked TNAF’s sound but compared them unfavorably to CHVRCHES, who mine similar territory with better results. This, however, is a real standout track from the New Zealand group, their best song to date, an anthemic work with a pulsing synth line and shout-along chorus.

12. Phantogram – You Don’t Get Me High Anymore. The duo really dug deep for the title of their third album, Three, which featured this lead single comparing a lover to a drug in the most unflattering of terms.

11. School of Seven Bells – Open Your Eyes. Released too late for my 2015 top 100, this song from SVIIB hit the perfect melange of poignancy for late bandmember Ben Curtis and the spacey electronica the duo made on their previous three albums. Alejandra Deheza’s whispered lyrics seem so much more melancholy in the context of her former romantic and professional partner’s death.

10. Lucius – Almost Makes Me Wish for Rain. It’s not quite Shirley Manson saying she’s only happy when it rains, but Lucius has managed to craft a clever song about looking for the bad when everything’s good – to the point of an inability to just be happy in the moment – in a song that infuses indie-pop with a healthy dose of Motown.

9. Bear Hands – 2AM. I mean, the core message of the song is an essential truth: Nothing good happens past two a.m. It’s less of a rock song than their previous alternative radio hits “Agora” and “Giants,” and there’s real craft in its crescendo from the ambling verse, like a drunkard who’s stayed too long at the party, to the voice of conscience in the tight chorus.

8. Jagwar Ma – O B 1. It’s a slow build, but a big payoff in Jagwar Ma’s best song to date, a minute and a half to the two-stage chorus that turns the song’s rhythm and tempo on their heads. Unlike their first hit, “Save Me,” which was great for three minutes but then seemed like a song that couldn’t find the exit, this one keeps the beat going strong right past the five-minute mark thanks to the long intro and the layered backing music.

7. FKA Twigs – Good to Love. I hated FKA Twigs’ highly-regarded but, in my opinion, utterly juvenile debut LP1, which showed she had many influences and could use them to curse in lots of different musical styles. Then she blew me away with this stunningly gorgeous ballad. “I’ve got a right to hurt inside.” Yes, you do whatever you need to do, just keep writing music like this, please.

6. Wild Beasts – Big Cat. Boy King was one of the best albums of the year, and if you listen to this and don’t find yourself singing “Big cat top of the food chain” over and over for hours, you might be tone-deaf.

5. Everything Everything – I Believe It Now. I’ve lumped Everything Everything with Wild Beasts and alt-J as British bands doing experimental things within alternative rock’s frameworks, with Wild Beasts veering towards art-pop and Everything Everything writing the musical equivalent of Zadie Smith’s hysterical realism. This one-off single, written for British soccer telecasts, is their most focused track yet, a huge, bombastic anthem that finds the quartet keeping themselves just a shade more under control than usual.

4. Speedy Ortiz – Death Note. Go figure: Speedy Ortiz’s best song so far was a rejected track from 2015’s Foil Deer that they released as a one-off this spring.

3. Glass Animals – Life Itself. Glass Animals always does interesting things with their percussion, but I haven’t thought much of their songwriting to date because they seemed more focused on being weird than writing tight songs. This, though, flattened me on first listen. It’s a perfect pop song, with multiple melodic elements, witty lyrics, and, of course, interesting percussion sounds.

2. ATCQ – Dis Generation. It’s about as close as we’ll ever get to a “Scenario” reunion, with Q-Tip, Phife, Jarobi White, and Busta Rhymes rapping fast, with each other, over each other, around each other, and, in Busta’s case, back and forth to himself. It’s the best he’s sounded in twenty years, and the energy of the studio is palpable in every line. Jarobi “imbibing on impeccable grass.” Tip making “a jubilant noise” and praising the likes of Kendrick Lamar and Earl Sweatshirt as “extensions of instinctual soul.” Busta Rhymes rhyming “In the church of Busta Rhymes, it’s my sermon you’re getting/Horizontal spittin’, I’m the exorcist of your writtens/’Don’t interrupt me n****!’/Sorry, that’s the sin I’m forgivin’.” And Phife, may he rest in peace, reminding us all that “we still the highest of commodity grade.” Yes, you were, and will forever be.

1. Radiohead – Burn the Witch. No song this year stayed with me like this one; their album A Moon Shaped Pool was too tepid for my tastes, but the interplay between the strings and Thom Yorke’s vocals – reminiscent of his work on P.J. Harvey’s “This Mess We’re In” – is like a surge of electricity that won’t stop, and some of the lyrics, including the line that “this is a low-flying panic attack,” stand as reminders of the art that Radiohead is capable of producing.