At the end, I’ll include a zip file to download all of these. The links are to YouTube videos for now.

25. Freddie Gibbs- “National Anthem (Fuck the World)”- Imagining your song as, paradoxically, something that could represent an entire country and a kiss-off to the entire world is certainly ambitious, but it’s perfect for Gibbs’ throaty but effortless flow. While he has a way of jamming syllables where they shouldn’t necessarily belong, you also get the sense that he never wastes a word. The chorus, bolstered by some mighty plaintive whistling, is built on Tupac-recalling chest-pounding, but it also suggests an unparalleled personal hunger. You might recall another Gary, Indiana native who did similar things.

24. Cults- “Go Outside”- Every line from this New York duo sounds like a chorus. A xylophone is always a cheap trick for creating earworms, but nothing supplants the disjointed, arching melodies at the center of this Manic Pixie Dream Girl banger. It ends just as modestly as it begins, but in the middle there are worlds of hummable immediacy.

23. Perfume Genius- “Mr. Peterson”- This is an aching, funereal song about an inappropriate relationship leading up to a suicide, but it’s told with language and delivery elliptical enough to make you believe that it was the most natural thing in the world. Not many of us can return to the matter-of-fact, vulnerable tone that seventeen-year-olds speak with, but when Mike Hadreas sings, “He made me a tape of Joy Division / He told me there was part of him missin’,” he nails it. Rather than tragically plummeting to his death, the title character just “jumped off a building,” knowing “he was ready to go.” The song, which is really just a concentrated memory, seems to break apart by the end, as if it was only half-remembered. But that half that we get is fragile and moving.

22. Aloe Blacc- “I Need a Dollar”- This is such an authentic recreation of a vibrant, searching Bill Withers-esque soul song that it risks coming off as parody. In four minutes, Blacc manages to re-enact all of the important tropes of American Black Music, but that doesn’t mean that the song sounds overly studied. Instead, it’s full and expressive in a singular way. The way most people came into contact with this song was through its status as the theme song to HBO’s disingenuous, superficial show How to Make It in America. Part of why the show doesn’t work is that its most truthful moment can’t ever eclipse the silky perfection of the introduction. From the first few piano plinks, Aloe Blacc creates a tough act to follow.

21. Tennis- “Marathon”- One second this sounds like “Be My Baby”-style bass drum gathers and doo-wop harmonies. The next second it turns into fuzzed-out scales that suggest a more cuddly Liz Phair. By the end, after all of your fun, you realize that the only thing uniting all of those judgments together is great pop music, which Tennis definitely is.

20. Free Energy- “Bang Pop”- When I first wrote about this song in May, I said that it sounded like “stealing a bag of ice from a gas station just because you can.” That’s glib, but I think what I meant was that the music is carefree and loud and spontaneous and freeing in that same way that consequence-free bad behavior is. But that statement doesn’t hint at the weird alchemy of context-free Thunderbird speaker-shattering that Free Energy weaves. The greatest trick indie dudes ever pulled was convincing the world that Bad Company and Thin Lizzy didn’t really exist. And that’s why Free Energy’s debut is one of the most over-looked releases of the year. But if you turn on the radio even today, you still can’t stop Godzilla. (And that’s still glib.)

19. Kanye West feat. Rick Ross- “Devil in a New Dress”- In the past ten years, I’ve probably written more about Kanye West than I’ve written about anyone else. I’ll try to make this brief, considering that he’ll definitely show up on this list again. The fact of the matter is that, while he produces a handful of unforgettable moments on this, sometimes with his inflection alone (“Satann-Satannn-Sataan…”), the real star of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s most ethereal, breezy song is Bink’s elegant production, leaning heavily on a sample of Smokey Robinson’s surely expensive “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” The addition of Rick Ross’ exasperated bark takes it to another level. His line “So many cars DMV thought it was mail fraud” is such a weird detail that you know it’s shit that actually happened to him, and you also know that Kanye, no matter how egotistical he seems, is a league leader in assists.

18. Titus Andronicus- “A More Perfect Union”- An Abraham Lincoln speech starts Titus’ ridiculously sprawling second album The Monitor, and it trails off with the line “As a nation, we men, we will live forever…or die by suicide.” That dichotomy often becomes the stakes of this breathless post-punk monument. It’s about The Civil War; being young; and, most of all, New Jersey. Depending on who you ask, New Jersey is either the home to the most dire crossfire of our nation’s poverty and violence or the place where MTV shoots Room Raiders. What Titus Andronicus finds across walls of power chord downstrokes and unsatisfied growls, as they “rally around the flag,” is that it’s both of those things. And much more.

17. Sleigh Bells- “Infinity Guitars”- This song is just as enormous as it is deceptively simple. It sounds as if this irrepressible duo mined ’80s trash culture for every tiny bit of catchy ephemera, and then spread those pebbles of cheerleading jean-jacketerring across two minutes and change. It’s no surprise that vocalist Alexis Krauss graduated from Lou Pearlman late-’90s girl-groups when you hear the simple power of her economic runs. This is fight music for after-school art clubs.

16. Big K.R.I.T.- “Country Shit”- Throughout his withered but assured debut K.R.I.T. Wuz Here, this Mississippi native proclaims who he is and what he represents with utmost certainty. The chopped-up vocal sample here does more to establish momentum and rhythm than any of the damp, skittering drums. There are songs on the mixtape that are more reflective, but few have the accessible swagger of this lead single. The chorus is “Let me tell you ‘bout this country shit”—as if he’s assuming that sharing his heritage with us is a privilege—and he banters about Gulf Coast signifiers with the rich depth of molasses, eager to accept that responsibility.