When much of the critical conversation this year focused on Brooklyn's nü-primitivism coldly capitalizing on globalism, TVOTR proved that the borough can give us so much more than Keffiyeh scarves. TVOTR mixed Princely falsettos and handclaps rooted in African-American churches with dissonant washes of feedback and sounds cribbed from "I Wanna Be Sedated"; hell, "Family Tree" references slavery and lynching while copping its aristocratic aural style from Coldplay. Lest we forget that the group is still a bunch of boho weirdoes, though, there's the unapologetically strange video for "Golden Age": with its brass-aided angelic chorus emerging triumphantly from the robotic funk of the verses, it was the closest thing 2008 pop had to Rapture. On that note, one last sigh of relief that "Golden" in December isn't a sad curio of a nation afraid to embrace difference on November 4, but instead stands as a bona fide fucking anthem going forward. --Eric Harvey

The follow-up to 2006's bleak, beautiful Return to Cookie Mountain, Dear Science is full of wondrous pop experiments like opening romp "Halfway Home," which buries a bubblegum ba-ba-ba refrain under a thick coat of synths and guitars. Such moments are part of the reason Dear Science is SPIN's Album of the Year -- the second such accolade for TVOTR in three years. Parse the lyrics, and the phrase "album of the year" reveals a double meaning. For Dear Science is a document of the absurd, oft-contradictory realities that have governed American lives over the past 12 months, during which waxing anxiety was offset by irrational optimism.
Consider the first two singles, "Dancing Choose" and "Golden Age." One depicts an overstuffed, senses-dulling culture that leaves its victims with "a palette blown to monochrome"; the other is a lush disco anthem -- part Off the Wall, part Wall of Sound -- that promises better times ahead: "There's a golden age comin' round." It's a jolting dichotomy, but an accurate one. Dear Science suggests that, even if the end seems nigh, we all need to keep smiling through the apocalypse.
BRIAN RAFTERY