Blender's 1001 Downloads: The 33 Best Albums of 2008

6. Robyn, Robyn
Ten years ago, this Swedish R&B girlie shared a producer with Britney Spears, had a couple of hits and ended up on the scrap pile of discarded blondes. This assertive bow shot is her from-nowhere comeback. Breathy and tough, riding sparks and jolts of electro pop, she lifts her skirt and offers a “taste of vanilla” but also talks gutter—at least, as gutter as they talk in Sweden. She also gets sweet, offering to knit and bake for a dude who’s broke but can make her vanilla melt. 
Download “Konichiwa Bitches,” “Bum Like You,” “Be Mine!”

7. Of Montreal, Skeletal Lamping
The weirder Kevin Barnes gets, the more fun this Georgia band’s records become. Here, he’s having a personality crisis—his falsetto-crooning alter ego Georgie Fruit, a “black she-male,” has mostly taken over—and he’s so obsessed with sex he can’t think straight. The result is a nonstop suite of twitchy, horny, peculiar songs that constantly change direction, most often into psychedelic glam-rock or pitter-patting synth-pop, but keep swerving back toward the dance floor.
Download “Id Engager,” “For Our Elegant Caste,” “Beware Our Nubile Miscreants”

8. Randy Newman, Harps and Angles
Part satirist, part sentimentalist, Newman disguises his poisonous attacks as brief monologues by (hilariously) horrible men. His favorite joke is that, as tenderly as he croons and drawls, these characters—oligarchs, aging sleazebags, well-intentioned racists, Republicans—are going to hell when they die. But his lush, sweet-country- and Dixieland-tinted orchestrations are expert and adoring, and this brief album’s two straightforward love songs are among his most unguarded.
Download “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country,” “A Piece of the Pie,” “Feels Like Home”

9. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
At Columbia University, these Topsider-rocking smarties boned up on postcolonial theory, West African beats and fly WASP honeys with Martha’s Vineyard summer homes—their findings are collected on this debut, which cheekily narrates a life of blueblood globe-trotting, hyper-literacy and lust while Afropop guitars bubble, harpsichords crinkle and beats bop. “M79” traipses from Central Park to the Khyber Pass. This isn’t trust-fund tourism, though: They invoke Cape Town as lovingly and knowingly as they do Cape Cod.
Download “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance,” “Oxford Comma,” “Walcott”