“Everything about that record is cursed.”

Will Wiesenfeld says that with a laugh, but it’s not really a joke. Obsidian, his second album under the name Baths, set off a brutal run of shows with a new collaborator, Morgan Greenwood, and electronic failures that seemed to have come from a witch’s hex.

But you could have gotten the cursed feeling just from the music. Obsidian is at once a dancy, electronic album and an uncompromisingly punishing listen. So hear our interview with Wiesenfeld, read our thoughts on Obsidian and see why it’s one of the best of the 10s.

“I think my whole life is a wake for Final Fantasy 8.”

— Will Wiesenfeld

When I first saw Yeasayer, it was at an outdoor music festival in Houston—-in June.

If you’re from Texas, you know how horrific this is. It was 107 degrees when the Brooklyn boys took the stage. Front man Chris Keating sweated through every article of clothing he had, making the foot around him a salty splash zone. But it all made some sort of humid sense. Yeasayer, fresh off of the hallucinatory highs of their debut All Hour Cymbals had decided to dive into the pop deep end. But, as a band who traded in fever dreams, it would have to be utterly baffling.

So it was and Odd Blood landed at the beginning of the decade, a beguiling, hypnotic, fiendishly dancable record that rode the undeniable bass groove of Ira Wolf Tuton and the dueling song-writing chops of Keating and Anand Wilder. It was as grand as it was unstable, pop mutated to some future form.

As we count down the greatest music of the 2010s, Odd Blood and its lead single “Ambling Alp” made the list. We sat down with Wilder to discuss the record and what it means to him now. So, listen to the podcast, read our thoughts on Odd Blood and “Ambling Alp” and hear why we think they’re the best of the 10s.

“I think we’re always interested in self-sabotage. ”

— Anand Wilder

Miles Davis’ “Générique” floats in like he was blowing fog through his trumpet.

It’s a surreal, beautiful, late-night ode to the night itself and all its pain and delight. To stretch that feeling over an entire album, rather than three minutes, would be a Herculean task of skill and restraint. And yet, La Saboteuse exists.

Yazz Ahmed’s document of psychedelic, Bahraini-inspired Jazz feels and sounds like nothing else in its genre. In a decade that saw Jazz reborn and reimagined through the fertile chaos of Hip-hop, Minimalism, Afrobeat, Caribbean swing and Cuban rhythms, Ahmed crafted a myth of dream-like quality. So hear our interview with Yazz, read our thoughts on her work and see why it’s the best of the 10s.

“[Psychedelic music] means losing your mind, being totally captured by the music, going into a dream like state. ”

— Yazz Ahmed

Where does a genre end?

Not when, as in, not when does a genre die. But where does our labeling regress into fetishism rather than anything helpful? Timbre is quite aware of the boundaries we place upon music and ourselves when dissecting sounds. The Nashville based harpist tours internationally on more traditional orchestral fair, but has also played with Jack White and avant-metal cuckoolanders The Chariot. With her album Sun & Moon she reached to explore the liminal space between any label. So listen to our interview with her, read our thoughts on Sun & Moon and hear why it’s one of the best of the 10s.

“We’re encountering something powerful that was taking them passed their normal life. Out of their stress, fear and pain. ”

“Ode to Physical Pain” is the exact title you’d expect a metal band to whip out at the end of an album.

But Thou are no nihilists. Hell, they don’t even like being called a metal band. “Ode to Physical Pain,” is, instead, the logical conclusion to the tortured, yet triumphant Heathen; a deep dive into the physical world, our interactions with nature and humanity’s base desires. No, this is far from fatalism; it is the least subtle reminder that you are alive. And it is a monstrous, wondrous thing. So, read our thoughts on Heathen, listen to our interview with Thou and hear why it’s the best of the 10s. 

“We were finding utopia by striking a balance between two extremes”

— Bryan Funck

A boy, a teen, a man, but one dream.

That’s the vision of A Dream Deferred. Skyzoo channels himself at 7, 15 and as a young man, daring the world to defy his ambition. Over some of the most lush production of the decade, Brooklyn becomes a character as much as an environment, breathing down Sky’s neck, threatening and encouraging in equal amounts. And in that cradle, Sky reflects on himself and celebrates Black excellence like few others could. So, read our thoughts on A Dream Deferred, listen to our interview with Skyzoo and hear why it’s one of the best of the 10s.

“I observed everything as a kid. I was a sponge. My first rhymes were looking out the window on the 18th floor. ”

— Skyzoo

Michigan’s all-stars go from Barry Sanders to Danny Brown, Sufjan Stevens to Carol Wald.

But if Michigan was going to pick one rep, one person to be a synecdoche for the whole warped energy of the state, it might be Shigeto. Zach “Shigeto” Saginaw’s last name isn’t a reference to the Michigan town, it was a misspelling on Ellis Island scribbled into lore. And that sort of flux, of happy accidents and profundity stemming from the mundane inform his work. That and the rich history of musical life inherent in Michigan itself. So, read our thoughts on “Detroit Part 1,” listen to our interview with Shigeto and see why he’s one of the best of the 10s.

“Trying to be something is so hard, I feel, besides being yourself. ”

— Shigeto

Rap vagabond is about the only way to describe Rav.

The USSR-born, London-based, East Coast-terrorizing rapper is a man out of time and without a land. A founder of the internet only EXO label, Rav and his cohort met through the fertile grounds of Newgrounds, looking for fellow hip-hop heads who held Akira and Illmatic in equal reverence. Rav burst out in 2012 with the Hyperkinesis EP, a rambunctious, bratty collection of songs that only held a veneer of joy before diving into an ocean’s worth of sorrow.

In the three years after, Rav grew up. His own struggles with addiction and depression had reached their climaxes, and in the burnout, he found the spirit that moved Beneath the Toxic Jungle. “Solanine,” the first single from the album, was a grand representation of the lo-fi, sigh filled, improbably catchy rap that he rode throughout the album. So read our thoughts on “Solanine,” listen to our interview with Rav and see why we think it’s one of the best of the 10s.

“That perfect ideal version of me being in a better place, just in that moment in time, felt like it was further than ever before. ”

— Rav

So your famed indie-rock band, a staple of the 2000s, is breaking up.

Your influence is such that your own son plays your most famous song just to piss you off. What’s your response? 

Well for Peter Matthew Bauer it was to hunker down in hotel rooms across Europe, demo like crazy, awash himself in his own mystic upbringing and craft Liberation! Though it might feel like a cheeky poke at The Walkmen to title your first solo record as such, Bauer looks for a deeper, more welcoming freedom. And that rings out across the sheer warmth of Liberation! He visits places of worship and finds kindness and dirty jokes in equal amounts, each new spire, chapel or slice of nature as friendly as the last. It’s an album about spirituality, quitters and the nexus between. So listen to our interview with Bauer, read our thoughts on Liberation! and see why it’s the best of the 10s. 

“I wanted to make music that, if you liked it, it meant you were putting up with me.”

— Peter Matthew Bauer

Peter Oren is tired.

There’s a weariness associated with all bass-baritones. Something in that low-rumble and rust that radiates a sense of pleasant exhaustion. But for the abyssal voice of Oren, there are troubling questions that ripple through and weigh him down. Anthropocene takes a micro and macro view on a rapidly evolving world and Oren’s (and our) inability to keep up with the speed. And the ever growing specter of Climate Change follows him at every turn. The anxiety, doom and depression that clings to a possible dystopian future rings clear through his voice. And in channeling that fear, he created one of the finest political records of our time. So hear our interview with Oren, read our thoughts on Anthropocene and see why it’s one of the best of the 10s.

“I tend to find the lessons I need in the natural world.”

— Peter Oren