Lykke Li's timbre and vocal phrasing may bear a striking resemblance to fellow Swedish pop singer Robyn, but her music is far more delicate.

In the same way that Lily Allen's career is inextricably tied to her MySpace page, and OK Go's profile was boosted by YouTube, Minneapolis quartet Tapes 'n Tapes owe much of their success to MP3 blog aggregators Elbo.ws and the Hype Machine, sites that documented their buzz in real time by giving greater exposure to the online music community's rapidly expanding long tail.

After debuting with two alluringly cryptic art-punk records in the early 2000s, Clinic fell into a creative rut, experimenting with new textures but basically rewriting the same tunes.