No extended commentary. Here they are:

20-11

The Notwist – The Devil, You + Me
The Walkmen – You & Me
Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
Fuck Buttons – Street Horrrsing
Hercules and Love Affair – Hercules and Love Affair
Lykke Li – Youth Novels
The Very Best – Mix Tape
Girl Talk – Night Ripper
Max Tundra – Parallax Error Beheads You
Booka Shade – The Sun & The Neon Light

10-1

The Dodos – Visiter
Thumping washtub bass energetic acoustic white boy soul.

Flying Lotus – Los Angeles
Instrumental hip-hop collage. Fresh, peppery, and textured.

M83 – Saturdays = Youth
Dreamy French cinema pop.

Ratatat – LP3
Guitar-infused electronic driving music.

Department of Eagles – In Ear Park
Indie folk doo-wop.

Lindstrøm – Where You Go I Go Too EP
Sprawling electonica.

TV on the Radio – Dear Science
Art rock. Post punk. I dunno.

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
Americana out of Kirkland. Tight harmonies, wonderful melodies. Beards.

Santogold – Santogold
Genre-bending new wave/pop/dub/punk.

Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours
Super happy fun dancy synth pop. Not candy, though; more like a nice fruit tarte – delicate, sweet, tangy, and creamy, all at once.

Because I love each and every one of you, here’s a mix of songs from this top 10 that you can stream.

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By the way, these don’t necessarily represent my most-listened-to of 2008. Those would be:

1. Ratatat
2. Santogold
3. Tim Hecker
4. Cut Copy
5. Crystal Castles
6. The Dodos
7. Booka Shade
8. High Places
9. Flying Lotus
10. eet Foxes
11. M83
12. Ellen Allien
13. Jens Lekman
14. Lykke Li
15. Girl Talk
16. Santogold/Diplo
17. Radiohead
18. Department of Eagles
19. Matthew Dear
20. Boards of Canada

Last.fm stats are skewed, in that 1) they don’t distinguish between album (artist only), so bands like Ratat and Tim Hecker that have some great albums from year’s past rank highly, and 2) number of listens is positively correlated to the number of tracks on an album. All this is neither here nor there.

More fun: my listening habits in visual form for 2008.