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

15. Bon Iver, For Emma
Bon iver is French(ish) for good winter, but Justin Vernon’s was pretty bleak. For three frostbitten months, reeling from the bust-up of his band and his relationship, he retreated to northwestern Wisconsin, hibernating in his dad’s cabin with nothing but an acoustic guitar and some recording gear. These nine songs, relentlessly spare and hopelessly forlorn, shiver with an isolation even company can’t fix. They’ll haunt you long after spring has broken.
Download “Skinny Love,” “The Wolves (Act I and II),” “For Emma”

16. Be Your Own Pet, Get Awkward
Pity the disaffected 21st-century teen. Friends still backstab, crushes still cheat, food courts are still la-hame. In this heavy-meta era of Juno and emo, irony rules, and the old-fashioned teen tonic called angst has gone kinda flat. These Tennessee thrashers have it both ways, spiking genuine lunchroom anxiety with tongue-in-cheek horror slapstick. This is a grisly parody of teen rebellion—see the student-slaughter parable “Becky,” which was banned by BYOP’s label and later released on an EP—that rocks hard enough to double as the real thing.
Download “Super Soaked,” “The Kelly Affair,” “You’re a Waste”

17. Conor Oberst, Conor Oberst
Conor Oberst has been on the road since before he was old enough to drive the van. But on this travelogue, recorded in a mystical Aztec valley, the emo elf behind Bright Eyes begins to write songs from outside the confines of his bedroom. He’s characteristically wordy, elocuting his ride-the-high-country rambles like he’s playing for a Scrabulous high score. But “Moab”’s dusty wisdom sums everything up: “There’s nothin’ that the road cannot heal.”
Download “Sausalito,” “I Don’t Want to Die (in the Hospital),” “Moab”

18. Ponytail, Ice Cream Spiritual
What kind of punk band would we expect from Baltimore, home of The Wire and a football team named for an Edgar Allan Poe poem about madness? One that perfectly blurs violence, insanity and fun. In Ponytail’s weirdly hot, totally incoherent noise, lunatic imp Molly Siegel sounds like a girl scout on a three-state killing spree, growling into waves of guitar blather and drum boogie. Ugly: It’s a new kind of sexy. 
Download “Beg Waves,” “Sky Drool,” “G Shock”

19. Katy Perry, One of the Boys
Kisser of girls, haver of boobs, scourge of boys who change their minds like girls change clothes, the California pastor’s daughter was the mall-rock subversive of the year. From the Pilates techno of “Hot N Cold” to the boyfriend blow-off “Ur So Gay” to the lesbo-lite lip locks of “I Kissed a Girl,” she messes with gender and genre stereotypes, shows a sweet side and with her confrontationally bi-curious pop, stirs up more bloggers than any other act.
Download “Hot N Cold,” “Self Inflicted,” “Fingerprints”