7 of 10

I was 13 in 1984. More to the point, I was 13 during 1984. It's hard to overstate the impact of Van Halen being the biggest band on the planet at that critical moment of an impressionable suburban adolescent's cognitive and social development.

8 of 10

My grandma's friend Willy told me the funniest and most honest thing I've ever heard an old person say. This was maybe two years ago, when I was visiting the retirement home where they both live. I asked Willy how he was doing.

8 of 10

"With a foot on the ground / I can turn it around / Warming up to the sound / And I'm not coming down," croons Imperial Teen masse over a percolating keyboard riff on their splendid new album, sounding like a veteran quartet with nothing to prove, but still hellbent on proving it anyway.

6 of 10

Read the review, then check out Deconstructing Lana Del Rey: untangling the year's most divisive new artist.

5 of 10

You can only cheerfully bark the refrain "Gonna walk around / Gonna walk around / Gonna walk around and drink" so long before your feet get tired, your poor liver gives out, and the rest of the kids at the party wander off and get jobs and stop being, well, kids. Which is the point at which Craig Finn's career truly started.

9 of 10

In evolutionary terms, the march of indie rock into the 21st century has been largely monkey-to-man; it's rare that a young act with pop promise takes a hard left at ape and winds up on all fours, a lion instead. Our bands have been getting smarter and more sensitive, not cannier and crueler.

7 of 10

The Pierces. The Watson Twins. Tegan and Sara. In an international indie scene curiously awash in close-harmonizing sister-folk acts, you can understand why Sweden's First Aid Kit chose a name -- even a name as blandly utilitarian as this one -- that sets them apart from the ever-widening post-Carter family.

7 of 10

Caroline Polachek is getting better at Scrabble. On her synth-pop crew's skeletal 2008 debut, Does You Inspire You, the singer-keyboardist was so proud of the song's hazy, unusually worded chorus — "The most evident utensil / Is none other than a pencil" — that the band risked a video budget, winning a VMA nomination for their datamoshing 4D clip.

7 of 10

It's a little too early for chillwave nostalgia. So how do we hashtag the bands who are staunchly holding on to the remnants of glo-fi? Those who continue to build upon reverbed fuzz, lazy guitar strums, and brooding, noncommittal synth drones that linger beyond the end of one song and into the next?

8 of 10

If you discovered hip-hop during the so-called Golden Age of the late-'80s/early-'90s, Queens still holds an almost mythic quality to this day. Which applies to both the rappers -- bigger-than-life rogues like Nas, Mobb Deep, Kool G.