Photo: MTV News

Is the album dead? I guess it depends on who you ask. Your Web-savvy nephew would probably tell you "yes." Lil Wayne, Coldplay or Britney would beg to differ. Me, I'm not sure. What I do know is that of the thousands of albums released this year, there were 25 that shone brightly, that made me think, laugh, cry and dance and sometimes even restored my faith in humanity.

And I've compiled those 25 below ... my favorite albums of 2008. Major-label blockbusters, quiet indie fare, hip-hop, electro and some that are all of the above. Hopefully, there's something for you, your nephew and the Coldplay fan in your life ... because we all lived music this year. And, to that end, if you'd like to send me your thoughts — and, of course, lists — hit me up at BTTS@MTVStaff.com.

So without further ado, on to the list:

25. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III
The year's most unlikely success story and the rare case of 1 million people getting it right. On Tha Carter III, Wayne spins tales both humorous and harrowing (sometimes at the same time), dropping mentions of Tennessee Titans QBs and retail chains and sounding very much like a guy who realizes he is probably the greatest, most unchained rapper alive (sometimes he also sounds like a stoned Yoda). It's either a minor miracle or a happy accident that he went platinum in a week or that he grabbed eight Grammy noms. With Wayne, you can never be sure — which is just another layer to the legend.

24. Coldplay, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
At best, it's probably the most sonically adventurous album from a major major-label rock act since Green Day's American Idiot (or even Radiohead's Kid A), a swirling mix of massive and minimal, of cathedral guitars and glacial synthesizers, tiny tablas and tack pianos. At worst, it's still the second-best Coldplay album. So, you know, win/win.

23. She & Him, Volume One
The anti-Scarlett (or, really, the anti-any-actor-turned-musician), Zooey Deschanel defied the odds and made one of the year's most satisfying albums, a crackling, sunny listen that recalls 1960s C&W, '70s AM radio and the stylings of Carole King and Linda Thompson. Sure, M. Ward helped out a bunch, but it's Zooey D's big, brassy voice that brings the whole thing together.

22. The Walkmen, You & Me
An exercise in simplicity and sadness from one of NYC's most underappreciated acts, You & Me creaks like old floorboards and shudders like a 10-bell hangover. Over the course of 14 blurry, damp tracks, frontman Hamilton Leithauser's world-weary howl somehow gets even wearier, and the band's time-tested loud/soft dynamics start to fray at the edges. If their last album — a song-for-song piss-take on Harry Nilsson and John Lennon's Pussy Cats record — was the party, well, You & Me is most certainly the morning after. Hope it was worth it.

21. Portishead, Third
An exercise in simplicity and sadness from one of Bristol's greatest acts, Third took the Portishead sound as we knew it — foggy, film-noir beats (your parents called it "trip-hop") floating beneath Beth Gibbons' harrowing voice — and rebooted it. What we got this time around was spooky synthesizers curling around simple drum patterns, acoustic guitars that disappeared into dense electronic plumes — a sound that was equal parts human ("The Rip") and machine ("Machine Gun"). Expect the next album sometime around 2030.

20. Beck, Modern Guilt
My favorite thing about Beck's eighth studio album (and something like 12th overall) isn't the hazy sheen applied by Danger Mouse, the singularity of its theme or the straightforwardness of the lyrics. It's the fact that, if viewed in the context of Beck's entire career, Guilt makes total and complete sense. Here is a former Golden Child edging gracefully (if not exactly willingly) into his 40s, still not sure where he fits in. Like I wrote last week, "Obsolescence has never sounded so good."

19. Panic at the Disco, Pretty. Odd.
An album unfairly skipped by fans and critics alike, Pretty. Odd. is what happens when a bunch of kids in their early 20s get together in a cabin, get baked (or, for legality's sake, don't), listen to a ton of Beatles records and think, "Why don't we do that?!?" because they don't know any better. In other words, it's exactly the kind of record I would've made when I was 21, except replace "a cabin" with "an apartment in Gainesville, Florida."

18. The Breeders, Mountain Battles
When you're really drunk in a really shady bar, looking at the yellowed jukebox in one corner and a bunch of Korean War vets in the other, and the bartender — who's been giving you the stink eye since the moment you first came in — finally decides you're OK and slides you a glass of Michelob on the house, and the air is dense because they don't give a sh-- about the smoking ordinance, and there are tiles on the ceiling and peanuts in a bucket and a picture of an old boat called "The Wild Rose" or something tacked to the wall behind the bar, and it's Christmas, that's basically what this record sounds like. That probably doesn't make sense.

17. Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles
Lead singer Alice Glass' whole "drinking blood/ playing with knives/ I am the undead" shtick might get a little tiresome, but there's no denying that the best moments on the Crystal Castles' self-titled debut come when she opens her mouth and just roars. Actually, the chippy, blippy instrumentals dreamed up by mastermind Ethan Kath are pretty great too. Part cyber-punk skuzz, part minimalist perfection, Crystal Castles might be the future, or no one might give a crap by this time next year, but there were few albums released in '08 more invigorating than this one.

16. MGMT, Oracular Spectacular
Take everything I said in that last sentence and apply it here too, except replace "cyber-punk skuzz" with "hippie-dippie noodling" and "minimalist perfection" with "burbling synthesizer overkill." Everything about these guys leads me to believe that we'll never hear a note from them again, but it's not as if that matters. For 12 glorious months (OK, more like 14, since the album was released digitally last year), MGMT were the shining poster boys for a Brooklyn scene that never was and the world's leading purveyors of wide-eyed electro optimism. Though that just might be the drugs talking.

15. Hercules and Love Affair, Hercules and Love Affair
Sumptuous, sprawling neo-disco/post-house (as if I can tell the difference) from New York-based DJ Andy Butler, Hercules isn't so much a band as a "musical project," one unafraid to blur genders and genres and genealogy, which is about the only way to explain gems like "Blind" and "Hercules Theme." It's probably why Antony Hegarty got involved too. Gay, straight, man, woman or something else entirely, this album is guaranteed to make you feel funny in your special place(s).

14. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
The year's most interesting backstory — bearded dude gets dumped, ditches band, nearly dies, moves to cabin in northern Wisconsin to recuperate, gets even more bearded, is utterly and completely alone — also made for one of the year's best albums. (OK, OK, Justin Vernon, a.k.a. Bon Iver, actually released this by himself in 2007, but who's counting?) Emma is a creaky, delicate and deliberately lo-fi take on love and loss, played wonderfully and sung in Vernon's husky, hushed tones. In other words, it sounds exactly like an album recorded by a bearded guy in a cabin in Wisconsin in the middle of winter is supposed to sound. Also, my wife really likes this one a lot.

13. M83, Saturdays = Youth
Anthony Gonzalez pens a loving ode to his faded youth, an album full of gauzy fantasy pop, starbursting synthesizers and gull-wing guitars (he grew up in the '80s, if you couldn't guess). Saturdays = Youth sounds like every single John Hughes film ever made, not to mention the rush of hormones that come with "Enchantment Under the Sea" dances or holding hands with a girl in a graveyard or drinking your first bottle of Boone's Farm in a parking lot. The sensations of being invincible, indestructible and, most of all, free ... and being too young to know any better. So basically, it's the soundtrack to universal youth — but, of course, some of us are old enough to realize that fact.

12. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
The boat shoes. The pique polo shirts. The musicology classes. The Ivy League diplomas. These are the things great bands are made of, no? Regardless of what you might think about VW — that they are snobs, that they are overrated, that they are kind of wieners — you cannot deny their ear for pitch-perfect indie pop. Their self-titled debut packed more hooks into a scant 34 minutes than any other album released this year. And perhaps, in doing so, it also gives us reason to reconsider the very idea of what a rock act should be these days. If a dude named Ezra can rock, well, then certainly anyone can. Also, this was the whitest album of the year, at least until Kanye dropped 808s & Heartbreak, that is.

11. Constantines, Kensington Heights
It's perhaps a testament to the growl of frontman Bryan Webb that even when he rumbles, "You can tell by the way I walk/ I've got hard feelings," you get the sense that he's somehow holding back. If anything, that's a pretty good way to sum up the fourth album from the Cons, a slab of blue-collar rage that tries very hard to keep it all stuffed up inside. The end result is songs like "I Will Not Sing a Hateful Song," "New King" and "Do What You Can Do," which bristle with anger as much as they do with, well, restraint. Webb might be drowning in debt, crushed by the expectations of previous generations, jobless, shiftless and generally helpless, but he's somehow managed to swallow all the rage that comes along with that, and only after letting it ferment for a while does he finally let the venom fly. There might not be a more happily angry album released this decade. Which means, in a way, the anger is a gift.

10. Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs
There are so many moments on Stairs where something seems to be teetering on the brink of collapse — the reverb-drenched middle of "Bixby Canyon Bridge," the wobbling bass and guitars in the intro of "I Will Possess Your Heart," the tablas (!) in "Pity and Fear," Ben Gibbard's psyche on "The Ice Is Getting Thinner" — that it's a testament to Death Cab's skill that they're able to pull it off. It's a testament to their dedication that they let things get that far in the first place. From the beginning, they claimed Stairs would be "bloody" and "loose" — a conscious step away from the polish of their Plans album — and it most certainly is both of those things, and then some. It's a perfectly imperfect album, which is to say that it sounds very much like a band, setting up in a room and just letting it rip, and that makes it perhaps more compelling than 90 percent of the rock albums released this year.

9. Erykah Badu, New Amerykah, Part One (Fourth World War)
Time isn't really important in Badu's New Amerykah, which is why she jumps from the smoke-filled streets of the 1970s to the darkened and desperate projects of the present day to the post (pre?) apocalyptic future without much concern for the narrative arc. What is important is the message she conveys throughout those travels: that no matter how hard we try, things keep falling apart. They have been and they are and they will continue to do so, unless we wake up, stand up and — most of all — fight. So she puts the gun to our backs, orders us to march headlong into the darkness. She might not tell us where we're going — or what we'll see when we get there — but no one ever said revolutions were easy. This is a story told through stony beats, crackling samples and smoky voices, and rather terrifyingly so. Welcome to post-millennial tension.

8. No Age, Nouns
If someday, an archeologist uncovers the ruins of L.A. club the Smell, they will undoubtedly also uncover copies of Nouns, the best album by the best band to be birthed from the scene (maybe the discs are in a supply closet or something). And when they finally figure out how to play the things on their 3-D holographic decks (these will be like giant laserdisc players or something, only with holograms) what will they think? Probably something to the effect of "Wow, these dudes can't play their instruments," at which point, some nerdy rock historian/ architect guy will turn to them and say something like, "Oh yeah? Well neither did the Ramones." And everyone will sort of nod in agreement and then move on to uncovering Pink's Hot Dogs or giant statues of Kobe Bryant from the rubble.

7. The Plastic Constellations, We Appreciate You
For something like 13 years, TPC were mythic warriors of rock ... writing songs about slaying mighty beasts and brotherhood and drinking on front stoops, playing legendarily boozy live shows, partying — and playing — harder than mere mortals ought to. Of course, this eventually caught up with them (they never made a dime doing any of it), so they were forced to tackle decidedly un-mythic tasks like fixing cars or selling real estate to make ends meet. They managed to keep the balance between rock and responsibility going for a few years, but in the end, guess which side won? So, in early '08, when they announced they were calling it quits, I was saddened, but certainly understanding. One cannot rock forever. That their farewell album, We Appreciate You, is so awesome — full of big dumb hooks and even dumber lyrics — makes me reconsider that sentiment. Their riffs will most certainly be missed, though it's good to know they were buried with their swords and shields. We'll meet up again someday in the afterlife, dudes.

6. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
In theory, this is just dance music, except you really can't dance to it. It's probably also illegal, only it just might be protected under the concept of "fair use." It could be art, but most art I'm familiar with doesn't contain samples from Too Short's "B---job Betty" and Dr. Dre's "Bi---es Ain't Sh--." So why don't we just call it all of the above? I don't think anyone involved with Feed the Animals — not Gregg Gillis, not the folks at Illegal Art, not anyone who's work is sampled on the album — intended it to become the lightning rod for 21st-century discourse that it somehow did ("Who owns music?" "What is intellectual property?" etc., etc., etc.), so perhaps it's just best to agree that everyone's right. Perhaps Animals will become the bedrock for a landmark Supreme Court decision ... perhaps Gillis will be sued within an inch of his life ... or perhaps he's the greatest media artist currently working, and we should all be grateful for that. Or maybe not. Because, really, f--- art, let's dance. Or at least attempt to.

5. The Hold Steady, Stay Positive
I don't think I can ever sum this one up any better than I did back in July. Why even bother trying: "The best band in America makes the best album of their career, a sprawling, profane opus that takes the singular world frontman Craig Finn has created over the course of four albums — dead-end kids doing dead-end things, usually down by the banks of the Mississippi River — and folds it in on itself, creating something entirely new in the process. There is still plenty of drinking (on water towers, in the woods, in Memphis) and drugging (in hotel rooms, at laser-light shows, in "cute little cars") and dance floors, but things have somehow gotten darker this time around, as if Finn himself knows that the party can't last forever and Sunday morning's gotta come someday. So accordingly, kids are crucified, canonized and catch spears in the side, while VFW halls and 7 Seconds cassettes are revered like Bethlehem or the Old Testament. Bar bands aren't supposed to be this God-fearing, unless they're drinking the sacramental wine, which, knowing the Hold Steady, doesn't seem all that improbable at this point."

4. Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak
Kanye has spent the past 12 months being wronged. Wronged by life. Wronged in love. And wronged by his contemporaries (especially those at the Recording Academy). So is there any wonder why, on Heartbreak, he's eternally the victim? Then again, it takes an artist of his skill — and one possessing his ego — to make an album so one-sided, let alone one that's this great. His detractors might say that the Auto-Tune thing is played out, or that he made a mighty mistake by ditching the rapping, but that's only because they're probably put off by everything he's accomplished here, if not made a little uncomfortable. Unflinchingly honest (even when he's probably bending the truth a bit), emotionally unbalanced, this is West as we've never seen — or heard — him before. He's alone on an island (Would 50 ever consider making an album like this? Could he?) establishing himself as one of the few great artists of the 21st century. And on Heartbreak — an album of singular focus and purpose — he's created a great piece of art.

3. The Gaslight Anthem, The '59 Sound
If Brian Fallon is sincere — and given his snarl, his growly voice and his leather jacket, there's no reason to believe he isn't — then he's perhaps the most hopelessly romantic kid to ever have been raised in New Brunswick, New Jersey. And I don't mean that in the "flowers and candy" sense of the term. Rather, he's in love with romantic ideals: of rock-and-roll Saturday nights, of magical drive-in theaters, of the fins on the back of an old Cadillac. On The '59 Sound, he's created a world where all of those things coexist — where a punk act from Jersey can move crowds like the Boss, or share the stage with Tom Petty, where rockabilly chicks leave you stranded in all-night diners, where salvation can be found at the turn of a radio dial. And to that end, there's an unmistakable nostalgic streak through his lyrics and the band's go-go-go guitars, but it's nostalgia in the sweet, straightforward, black-and-white sense ... the kind you see projected on screens. Because life can be a movie, but only if you believe it so.

2. Deerhunter, Microcastle/ Weird Era Cont. It's difficult to commend a band on their restraint when it released two albums in 2008, but over the course of a pair of discs — and 25 songs — Deerhunter managed to show nothing but restraint, reeling in the sonic terrorism and just writing knee-buckling tunes. "Nothing Ever Happened," "Saved by Old Times" and "Operation" were plenty good — swoony, scary, driving stuff — that delivered on the promise of their 2007 output (particularly "After Class," the song they released on the Rare Book Room Records comp) and showcased a band quickly turning into one of indie rock's best. Frontman Bradford Cox's lyrics were still open-wound raw, and there were still moments on both albums of hissy, misty experimentation, but Microcastle and Weird Era sharpened the focus, and because of that, they're both massively great, not to mention welcome additions to the legendary list of albums released by the 4AD label. Legacies are tough to figure — especially when you're talking about Deerhunter, a band that seems determined to destroy whatever good will it's built up — but I have the feeling that in 10 years' time, we'll look back at both of these albums as being landmark indie. There's magic here. You've just got to sift through a bit of detritus to find it. That's the Deerhunter way.

1. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
An album that wrestles with big questions: How does humanity survive in the era of technology? How do we find beauty in an increasingly ugly world? Why do we continue when the odds are stacked against us? There might be no answer to any of those things — and TVOTR are smart enough to realize that — so instead, they can only offer up unflinching optimism and a steadfast resolve to never give up searching for those slippery solutions. Dear Science is, on the surface, a very mechanical beast — full of shimmery synths, pulsing electronics, otherworldly falsettos — and it's an album about the 21st century, to be sure, but there's also a very human heart beating beneath it all, because it's mainly an album about love, family, life, happiness and the kind of things that have buoyed man since the very beginning of time. Is love all we really need? It sounds vaguely ridiculous, but then again — who knows? Perhaps a little faith in the timeless is all we really need. At least, I hope so.

This is just our opinion — what's yours? Share your lists by uploading a video to YouRHere.MTV.com or leaving a comment below.

• Lil Wayne
• Kanye West
• Death Cab For Cutie
• Panic at the Disco
• Erykah Badu

Deerhunter's Bradford Cox
Photo: Barry Brecheisen/ WireImage

On The Record: Probably My First Mea Culpa

This week's column will probably be read by somewhere between 700 and 1,300 people, which is not particularly great. This is because it is mostly about Deerhunter and journalistic integrity, two things which — sadly — people don't seem to care about all that much these days.

And yet, despite all that, I don't have any hesitation writing it; sometimes things like "page views" and "unique visitors" aren't as important as being professional, responsible and fair (that sound you hear is the ad-sales folks sending 10,000 volts of electricity coursing through my chair). So, that's what I'm going to try to do right now.

See, Bradford Cox is pretty mad at me.

For those of you who don't know, he's the mastermind behind Deerhunter — a terrifyingly terrific and prolific band (last year alone they released an album, an EP and a single, all of which are great) — and Atlas Sound, his equally terrific and prolific solo project. I have an enormous amount of respect for him and his music (I named Deerhunter the "Band of the Year" in 2007), though that's not completely why I'm writing this column: I'm doing it because I think he has a right to be upset with me.

Here's why: Over the weekend, Cox, doing what he's done countless times before, gave away free music on his blog, this time in the form of a "Virtual 7-inch" that contained two Atlas songs. The only problem was that this time, when fans attempted to download the tunes, they somehow ended up also downloading the entire contents of Cox's MediaFire account (he had accidentally left it unlocked) — which included demos, song sketches, two fully completed albums and a whole bunch of photos of his friends and family.

Naturally, when that material began to make their way around file-sharing sites, Cox reacted much in the same way anyone would: He sort of lost it, posting (and then deleting) a series of messages on his blog that ran the gamut from denial to anger to bargaining and finally, at around 3 a.m. Sunday morning, acceptance. Basically, he rifled through the entire grieving process in a little more than 12 hours. Could he have taken a step back, perhaps counted to 100, or physically separated his fingers from the keyboard? Yes. Did he? No. And maybe neither would you or I, for that matter.

Of course, on Monday, when I wrote about the entire incident on MTV's Newsroom blog, I wasn't considering any of that. I basically recapped the entire event in a condescending tone, put words in Cox's mouth (the whole "Blames You" headline), and did not bother attempting to contact him for further comment or clarification. I was irresponsible and one-sided. In other words, I covered the whole thing the way your average blogger would.

That bums me out. Far be it from me to consider myself some paragon of journalistic integrity — I am, after all, the same guy who penned a passive-aggressive "open letter" to Diddy — but, for God's sake, I didn't even do my job correctly. This was amateur.

And yes, I could blame it all on the fact that I am only in the office one day a week (thanks to "FNMTV"), but the simple fact is that I took the lazy route. I just wrote in my "bloggy voice," filed the piece and moved on.

I hate everything about that last sentence. I can't stand the fact that I now write in two tones: "newsy" and "bloggy." I loathe the fact that I ignored the feeling in the pit of my stomach and filed the post anyway. And I'm sort of depressed that no one — not an editor, not a commenter — called me out on the shoddy work I did. Mostly because I think that confirms my fear that not enough people care about journalistic integrity anymore.

Because, really, why would we? What standards should bloggers be held to — after all, they make no claims about being actual journalists. And furthermore, does being a good journalist even matter anymore, or is being snarky more important than being responsible, correct and fair?

I mentioned a second ago that no one took me to task for the blog post, but that isn't exactly the case. Cox himself e-mailed me about it, and we had a fairly lengthy conversation. The general theme was that he was disappointed with the tone of the blog post. He said he reacted the way he did because someone on a message board had posted the leaked material under a pseudonym that made light of his deceased friend and bandmate Justin Bosworth, and he wished I would have attempted to contact him before filing the post.

I apologized and offered to do an interview with him so he could clear the air, but he declined. Ultimately, he accepted my apology, appreciated my sincerity and ended by saying that he was no longer upset, which sort of made me feel less guilty (but at the same time also made me want to crawl into a hole).

In some way, I'm sort of glad he didn't want to respond, because that would've given me the satisfaction of being able to make this thing right. That's never going to happen now, which is just another byproduct of me not doing my job and falling victim to the prevailing attitude of the times. It might seem goofy, but I'd like to promise to anyone who reads this — be it Bradford Cox or my college buddy Ernest Cox (no relation) — that I won't let it happen again.

Don't worry though. I'm sure next week I'll be back with more fifth-grade humor and thinly veiled, thoroughly unfounded attacks against your favorite band. I am a journalist, after all.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Send 'em to me at BTTS@MTVStaff.com.

• Deerhunter

• Vampire Weekend
• White Williams
• Deerhunter

Deerhunter's Bradford Cox
Photo: Roger Kisby/Getty Images

If there is a busier guy in the indie-rock fraternity (and it does at times feel like a fraternity, complete with hazing) than Bradford Cox, I'd like to know who it is. The Deerhunter frontman — whose band made a stunning, droning, blood-smeared, dress-wearing splash last year with the acclaimed Cryptograms album, Fluorescent Grey EP and explosive live shows — has begun '08 on a slightly more relaxed but just as busy note.

We caught up with Cox during the second week of a tour to support Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, the debut of Atlas Sound — a solo project that finds him in a dreamy, discordant, more electronic and less noisy place than Deerhunter. To go along with the new album, there is also something of a new Bradford. Having just recently kicked a dependence on the anti-anxiety medication Ativan, Cox seems more at ease both on- and offstage.

"My spirits are much better," he said. "One thing about Deerhunter is that it takes a lot out of you to perform that way. With Atlas Sound it's different, it's more relaxed. My goal on this tour was to maintain my sanity."

But as the year goes, his schedule only gets more insane. Atlas Sound will be on the road in America through mid-March, then will head to Europe to open for Animal Collective and play festival dates. In between, Bradford has penciled in a late-March trip to Morocco to spend a fortnight working on music with pals Ed Droste from Grizzly Bear and Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett.

"Ed's rented this villa where we would record," Cox explained. "We want to make, like, a pop album. We haven't come up with [a name for the project] yet. Ed just wants to call it 'Morocco,' but I think we ought to come up with some name. It should be a lot of fun. I feel like I might have to get some [immunization] shots though. I'm real sensitive to, like, unusual foreign places."

Closer to home, Cox also hopes to resume working on Ghetto Cross, his collaboration with fellow Atlantan Cole Alexander from the Black Lips. "I hope kids like it. Cole and I used to be the best of friends, and as both of our bands have been traveling more, we've kind of drifted apart. So as soon as I get off tour I am gonna call Cole up and say, 'Get your butt over here, we're gonna record some songs!' "

There is also the matter of a soundtrack he's reportedly been working on with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O, which is reportedly for the film adaptation of director Spike Jonze's interpretation of "Where the Wild Things Are" (the uncertain status of that film has been the subject of much recent speculation in the movie world). Cox wouldn't comment on the project except to say that "Karen is a wonderful composer and she's just created some beautiful music."

Of course, there is also Bradford's main gig.

Plans call for Deerhunter to begin work on a new album this summer at Brooklyn's Rare Book Room studio, with an eye toward a Halloween release. While on their current hiatus, the members have been working on new music, and though it's still early, Cox said fans may be in for a surprise. "I think we're on a new page here with Deerhunter," he said. "We've all been listening to pop music, and I don't think any of us are quite as interested [as before] in ambient music right now. All the songs we've written, there's no weird effects, it's all just guitars plugged into amps, so it's very much like a '60s pop record or something. I'm really looking forward to it." He laughed. "I don't know how the [Deerhunter] audience will react to it, we might alienate a good portion of them."

Finally, there is the copious "unofficial" music Cox works on during downtime (although it's hard to imagine him having any), holed away hermit-like in his Atlanta bedroom. He creates several songs a day, both covers and new tracks, often unrefined and compiled into self-styled EPs posted on his well-trafficked blog. There, he also raves, rants, reminisces and even reaches out and offers "healing music" to kids with serious illnesses. Other artists may release more polished tracks online, but Bradford says that in terms of sheer volume, they can't touch his output.

He is so prolific, he said, partly because music is his life, that it "occupies the same part of my brain" that a romantic relationship would, and also because he hopes to inspire other kids to take advantage of technology and create bedroom music of their own. But there may be another, darker reason: a sense of his own mortality.

"I made the Atlas Sound record last summer when I was going through some stuff related to my physical condition, and I had this impression that I didn't have very much more time left." The condition Cox refers to is Marfan syndrome — a connective-tissue disorder that has plagued him since childhood, and which can have serious cardiovascular complications that worsen with age. The 26-year-old says he "doesn't really monitor" his health as much as he should, "so I really have no idea what's going on. But that's why I don't really care about anything but making as much music as I can — to be remembered by."

He's already accomplished that, but contrary to what some other indie types have suggested, Cox scoffs at the notion that he's "made it." "A lot of young bands, like 16- or 17-year-olds starting up bands, say, 'Hey man, all we need is a good Pitchfork review and we'll be set.' Well, we had the good Pitchfork review [three, actually: Cox's batting average on the much-ballyhooed site is currently 8.76] and I still make less money than I did putting vinyl on signs. It's hard, hard, hard work."

Still, he's not complaining. "It's been a fun, fun year. For the most part ..."

• Raising Hell In The ATL

• Deerhunter
• Atlas Sound
• Grizzly Bear
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Photo: Kevin Winter/ Getty Images

• Amy Winehouse
• Black Lips
• Deerhunter
• Feist
• Bang Camaro

Deerhunter's Bradford Cox
Photo: Roger Kisby/ Getty Images

On The Record: The Band Of The Year (Apparently Isn't Even A Band Anymore)

I am no good at predicting the future, so writing a speculative column on Monday that isn't scheduled to run until Wednesday might not be the smartest move. But thanks to, er, Thanksgiving, that's exactly what I'm doing. And here's the leap I'm taking: Deerhunter are totally the band of the year.

I've been mulling over this idea for a few weeks, since we're getting to the end of 2007 and as such I'm required by law to begin toiling over things like "Best of" lists and "2007: The Year the Music Industry Died" essays (or, as my brother, who works for a real-estate developer in Orlando, put it: " The things that don't matter to anyone but you and people like you"). And really, when I started thinking about it, there wasn't really anyone else who came to mind (well, aside from Radiohead ... perhaps you've heard that they decided to release their In Rainbows album all by themselves).

So it pretty much had to be Deerhunter. To wit:

» From January to June, they release a terrific/terrifying LP (the fabulously creepy, spacey and weird Cryptograms), an even more terrific, slightly less terrifying EP (Fluorescent Grey) and one of the year's best songs ("After Class," which will appear on a comp being put out by the Brooklyn recording studio/ label Rare Book Room one of these days). It's a remarkable body of work, primarily because, over the course of 17 songs, you can actually hear Deerhunter becoming a terrific band; the ambient noise experiments of Cryptograms shift into the dreamy, surrealist rock of Fluourescent and finally "After Class," which combines both and is without a doubt the best song they've ever made (at least so far).

» In July, they embark on a headlining tour/ self-flagellation agenda that features frontman Bradford Cox wearing cocktail dresses, smearing fake blood on his face, simulating sex acts on his bandmates and going off on rambling, unsettling tirades about his childhood, often all at once. Somehow, no one in the band dies during this time.

» That same month, they also start a blog, which becomes sort of infamous when guitarist Lockett Pundt starts posting photographs of his own poop, and really, really infamous when Cox writes an entry called "five imaginary boyfriends (and why they would never work out)" which contains graphic accounts of his fictional sexual encounters, plus pornographic images of — reportedly — underage boys. (The post is later removed, and Cox defends it by writing, "I have not used a single image that did not come from a legitimate site that keeps age records. Child pornography is f---ed up, and as someone who was sexually abused since I was seven, I take it pretty seriously.") Cox then spends the remainder of July and August posting about his mugging in Atlanta and his feud with LA Weekly's Jeff Weiss, all while continually updating the site with MP3s and mixtapes he recorded under the moniker of Atlas Sound.

» Somewhere along the way, this all becomes too much for the band's other guitarist, Colin Mee, who quits the group, only to eventually rejoin them on the eve of a European tour. Cox begins using interviews, live shows and the band's blog as platforms for discussing Deerhunter's new album, which he says will be called Microcastle and will feature a "doo-wop, '50s/ early '60s, Everly Brothers" vibe, plus a three-song suite in which he will attempt to "kill off the adolescent character that haunts everything I write."He also talks of releasing an Atlas Sound LP (slated for release in February) and launching a full-scale tour in support of it.

Seriously. Your move, Thom Yorke.

And as if the fact that all of this happened within the first nine months of the year wasn't reason enough to give the nod to Deerhunter, consider the events of this past Sunday (November 18), when Cox took to the band's blog once again, this time to acknowledge the fact that Deerhunter would be going on hiatus at year's end. Seriously. There is no encore. It is not known when — if ever — they will play together again, as Cox writes, "We are all exhausted now and ready to be home. ... We all need some time to organize our lives. ... Deerhunter is sleeping now."

And with that, Deerhunter pretty much wrapped up band-of-the -year honors, because I can't think of another act in history whose entire career arc took place over the course of 12 months, under such bizarrely open circumstances and with so many people watching. They went from "unknown" to "infamous" to "much-missed" quicker than any band ever.

Yes, I am aware that their first album, the demurely titled Turn It Up F----t, came out in 2005. But from January to November of 2007, no band mattered more to people like me than Deerhunter. They were divisive (primarily because they learned very early on just how to work the hype machine), they were difficult and they were much-discussed. And they knew all this, which is why it was so brilliant (and incredibly fitting) when they announced their hiatus the way they did. It was a supremely meta moment — blog band announces hiatus via blog — one that encapsulated 2007 (and to a larger extent, the entire decade) in a way that In Rainbows didn't.

Of course, as I said, I'm writing this on Monday ... by Wednesday, Cox could've updated the band's blog to say that the announcement was a big joke. It's also entirely possible that the hiatus won't be permanent — Deerhunter are scheduled to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in England in May, so this all could be starting over again at any point.

But I don't think that any of those things really matter all that much. Because for several months, no band confounded or amazed like Deerhunter did. They were as brilliant in life as they are "on hiatus," and as such, they deserve the accolades.

So go enjoy it, fellas. Unless someone does something completely outrageous over the next five weeks, you're my band of the year. Go celebrate with some furious blogging. Or, you know, by not being a band anymore. And if that sentiment doesn't sum 2007 up nicely, well, then I don't know what will.

B-Sides: Other Stories I'm Following This Week

50 Cent turns to high-profile beefs — with Britney and the Killers.

True story: Patrick Stump refused to remove his backpack for this interview.

Remember that episode of Cribs from a few years back where Scarface took us on a tour of his townhouse while wearing a XXX-L Barry Sanders jersey and no pants? Scarface rules.

Questions? Concerns? Bands of the Year? Hit me up at BTTS@MTVStaff.com.

• Deerhunter

M.I.A. performs at CMJ on Friday
Photo: Roger Kisby/Getty Images

NEW YORK — The CMJ Music Marathon is always a magical confluence of several hundred bands; scores of odd-size venues scattered all about the boroughs of NYC (and New Jersey too); air-tight, no-room-for-encores scheduling; clueless, map-clutching out-of-towners; and perilous, late-night subway rides deep into the heart of Lord-knows-where.

That this goes on for four never-say-die days and nights is a testament to the veracity of the fest's name: CMJ is not a sprint. It is 26.2 grueling, bloody miles of music. Nothing is easy. Tough choices need to be made. The wounded are left behind. That people actually seem to enjoy all of this is a testament not just to the will of the human spirit, but to the boundless energy of the pure-hearted, unspoiled music fan.

Because unlike South By Southwest — the Marathon's bratty, down-South brother (which, in the minds of many, has surpassed the elder as the premier fest in the States) — CMJ is a musical festival for people who actually like music festivals and all the headaches and heartbreaks that come along with them. There is no Sixth Street (the Austin thoroughfare that hosts the majority of SXSW's action) to speak of, no label-sponsored cocktail hours at swank Texas hotels, no delicious Bar-be-que to demolish. SXSW is easy, sort of like an industry-wide booze cruise with bands playing on the pool deck. CMJ is complicated, a sometimes-miserable mess, with bands playing in apartments in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

But despite all that — or, perhaps, because of it — CMJ also offers rewards beyond your wildest dreams. If you're willing to put in the work, then the Marathon will deliver the goods, and the battles you fight along the way make the end results that much sweeter. Bands feel like tiny pearls, discovered only after hours of prying, swearing, sweating and bleeding. And for that fact alone, it's pretty great.

In that regard, CMJ 2007 was probably the pearliest in recent memory, though perhaps not for the reasons you'd expect. After all, the concept of "discovering" a band at any music fest is about as antiquated as the concept of fests themselves, thanks in no small part to the rise of taste-making blogs, yet there was something incredibly satisfying about witnessing acts like Black Kids and Yeasayer deliver sets that more than lived up to the hype surrounding them.

The former — a quintet from Jacksonville, Florida, that currently does not have a record (though it does have a record label: Almost Gold, the home of Peter Bjorn and John) — overcame an overly chatty crowd and a malfunctioning amp at the Annex on Thursday to deliver a herky-jerky set that sounded like the Cure on DFA Records. The latter, a bunch of Brooklyn weirdos with a predilection for droning electronics and delicate African melodies, owned Saturday night, washing through the borough's Glasslands art space like some sort of mythic flood, leaving the beards-and-glasses crowd soaked and awed in their wake.

Deerhunter, No Age and Dan Deacon — a trio of acts also not unfamiliar with blog love — kicked off the Marathon Wednesday night at the Bowery Ballroom with sets that were, in order: bizarre-yet-impactful; scarily spazzy; and, well, sweat-drenched. Earlier that day, Vampire Weekend shuffled their way through an afternoon set at the tiny Cake Shop, debuting a new track or two from their upcoming debut. And Los Angeles' Health howled, chanted and flailed their way to the top of a w-a-a-y packed noise-core bill (Japanther! AIDS Wolf! Sightings!) on Friday at the Knitting Factory.

But it wasn't all up-and-comers delivering the goods. There were also pearls to be found if you managed to brave the lines to see established acts like Spoon, Band of Horses and M.I.A. French DJ duo Justice had the crowd at newish venue Terminal 5 swaying and pumping, and the Meat Puppets — yeah, the Meat Puppets — were way too excited to be playing the tiny club Pianos. There was also a fair amount of hip-hop on display — truly one area in which CMJ trumps SXSW — from a feisty Wednesday night party at the sleek Hiro ballroom that featured Kanye West's DJ A-Trak and Chicagoans Kid Sister and the Cool Kids, to a fiery Saturday set by Brother Ali.

In the end, attempting to recap something as chaotic and hydra-headed as CMJ is nearly impossible. There is no unifying theme, ever, and the 2007 edition was even more fractious than any previous year. But, as we've tried to encompass in our on-air coverage, that's part of what makes the Marathon great: it's the searching, the scheduling, the "Holy sh--, I almost died, but I made it to Simian Mobile Disco's set!" that makes this unlike any music festival in the world. There's real danger here.

And will any of the bands we mentioned above even matter in a few years' time? Probably not, but that's nearly beside the point. You don't come to the Marathon to get discovered anymore — you come here to build upon a fleeting legend, to tough out roughly 47 different shows, to traverse shadowy alleyways, to party until the sun comes up and to wear yourself down. And perhaps the most amazing thing about CMJ is that the previous sentence applies to both the bands and the fans.

Check out our complete CMJ 2007 coverage, including reports, video and photos, in the You R Here blog.

• CMJ '07: Who Have We Discovered This Year?

• M.I.A.
• Spoon
• Justice
• Deerhunter