The top 10 albums of 2008

Oooh a list. On a blog? At the end of the year? With Bon Iver at No1? It's all unheard of, I know, but that's the reality, so deal with it. These are our 10 favourite albums of 2008. The list features Cambodian pop, 8-bit screamo, Balkan folk and electro hair metal but the album of the year is without a doubt, hands-down, number-one-with-a-bullet Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago. It has topped quite a few best-of lists this year (including Rough Trade and Observer Music Monthly), but we've been going on about it all year - we named it best album of the year so far back in July. You can listen to tracks from most of these albums in the player on the right.

1. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
2. TV on the Radio – Dear Science
3. Late of the Pier - Fantasy Black Channel
4. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
5. Beck - Modern Guilt
6. The Shortwave Set - Replica Sun Machine
7. Headless Heroes - The Silence of Love
8. Devotchka - A Mad and Faithful Telling
9. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
10. Dengue Fever - Venus On Earth

Headless Heroes

You might think that it being monday morning, combined with it being windy, grey and rainy and there being just too much hangover still left in my head would get a person down but actually it's set me up to be in the right mood to discover Headless Heroes. Jesus and the Mary Chain's 'Just Like Honey' (aka 'the one from the end of Lost In Translation') covered by Alela Diane with beautiful plaintive, dreamy production, all echoey and the-world-is-not-a-bad-place inducing. I'm picking up the album from Rough Trade on the way home; it's a covers album featuring reworkings of tracks by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Daniel Johnson and Vashti Bunyan among others.

Headless Heroes - Just Like Honey

Buy album from Rough Trade here