No particular order here, I just remembered a thread where America said the whole Caring About Indie Music scene really went off a cliff after the last decade and figured it's deep enough in the rear-view now to look back fondly on it.

Grizzly Bear - "Two Weeks"
I never really understood the hype around Grizzly Bear. Most of their music just sounds like freeform mumbling and burbling to me. But for one shining moment, they decided to write a pop song, and it was glorious. Some creative soul set it to scenes from Le ballon rouge and the result is so perfect that it's a shame the band didn't come up with it first.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Maps"
Feels like there's such a consensus on this song's place in the pantheon that I can't really add much except that I've been listening to this song on a regular basis since the summer of 2004 and only just a few hours ago did it dawn on me that Karen O sounds like Chrissie Hynde here.

Mountain Goats - "This Year"
I love the Mountain Goats and would have made sure to see them anyway back in 2012, but I went to that concert because I desperately needed to hear and communally sing along to this song. I hadn't felt like that since high school when I went to Summerfest to hear Average White Band play "Pick Up the Pieces."

Modest Mouse - "Ocean Breathes Salty"
No, not "Float On," which is more "iconic" or whatever as a song of the decade because they said they wrote it to cheer everyone up about George W. Bush, but this was always the far superior song to me.

MGMT - "Time to Pretend"
Allowing this one as an Iconic Song Of The Decade: "This is our decision: to live fast and die young/We've got the vision, now let's have some fun/Yeah it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?/Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?" is millennialsruinedby2008.mp3

Broken Social Scene - "It's All Gonna Break"
My second-favorite art-rock epic with the lyric "when I was a kid, you fucked me in the ass." The 2005 s/t is near and dear to my heart, way more than You Forgot It In People, and it was a tough call to pick one song. It came down to this and "Shoreline."

Radiohead - "Idioteque"
Well, it's the Kid Aest song off Kid A (surprisingly, this is not the second track, "Kid A"), and it's the album that set the whole decade of music in motion. I remember being bummed out that the chords are a sample from some ur-primitive electronic music and not original.

Arcade Fire - the entirety of Funeral
Seems unfair to pick just one cut off the album, picking from "Wake Up" which was the big hit, the Neighborhood suite, which itself can't be fairly partitioned, "Une année sans lumiere," which is my personal favorite, and "Crown of Love

Arcade Fire - "No Cars Go"
Even more unfair is that I'm double-dipping on the Arcade Fire, which I try to avoid doing on best-of lists, but if I had to pick one song that most purely encapsulated the band's entire artistic mission before James Murphy ruined them with hipster irony, this would have to be the one (the Neon Bible version, not the EP version). It still gets me down to think of how awesome this band was before they took a lot of advice. The lead single from the new album just answers the question no one ever would have thought to ask: "what if General Public were shitty?"

LCD Soundsystem - "All My Friends"

Old Crow Medicine Show - "Wagon Wheel"
You can probably blame the Mumfords and Lumineers on this song.

Belle and Sebastian - "Your Cover's Blown"
B&S had to dream it all up again a la U2 after Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant was such a desultory album, but they didn't really nail down the new sound until the EP for "Wrapped Up in Books." If I do a thread for LPs The Life Pursuit will be near the top.

Tindersticks - "People Keep Comin' Around"
Some people might call this song a mere rewrite of "Riders on the Storm" but those people are stupid assholes. I'll never understand how Tindersticks was never more popular stateside than they were. I can't think of many bands that were firing on all cylinders in terms of instrumentation, musicianship, and lyricism the way they were from 1993-2003, especially once they potted down a lot of the baroque-pop influences in favor of jazz and blue-eyed soul. Bjork, maybe, but now you're talking singular vision versus a full band and the interplay there. Anyway, I think what makes this song a cut above the rest, besides the awesome bass line, Rhodes piano, and horn arrangements, is that it's one of the only times the lead vocalist defers some of the lead vocals to thhe guy who was their chief instrumentalist, and his vocals add as much as everything else he did.

Wilco - "Jesus, Etc."
The bridge when the pedal steel comes in might be my favorite eight (nine?) bars in all of recorded music.

The Weakerthans - "One Great City!"

Old 97s - "Designs on You"
The girl I was hopelessly in love with in high school sent me this song one time, which is funny because by rights I should have been the one sending it to her, but then she always was so much cooler than I was.

More as they come to mind and I beat myself up relentlessly for initially omitting them.

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Bon Iver - Skinny Love
For Arcade Fire, my favorite is Rebellion (Lies)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away
The Shins - A Comet Appears

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"Fireworks" - Animal Collective

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The Court will accord substantial deference to the government's immigration policies, particularly those that implicate matters of national security.

I feel like indie rock really only existed from July 30, 2001 with the release of The Strokes, Is This It, and ended March 6, 2007 with the release of Arcade Fire's Neon Bible.

Between those bookends was truly indie rock qua indie rock.

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Wolf Like Me -- TV on the Radio.
Casimir Pulaski Day -- Sufjan Stevens

More to come....

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Almost Crimes -- Broken Social Scene

I Remember Me -- Sliver Jews
(Probably letting my own connection with this song color my answer as this probably isn't even the best song on this album. And if we're being honset, all their best work had been made prior to 2000.)

The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism -- New Pornographers
(Breaking my own rule here as this was released prior to Is This Is, but it still bangs [in a poppy indie-rock sense] today.

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Good call on Ocean Breathes Salty...easily the best song on that album.

As far as Arcade Fire goes...Antichrist Television Blues is probably my favorite of their songs.

For me, I love The Hold Steady. Really hit their stride on Boys and Girls in America...Citrus, Chillout Tent, Stuck Between Stations, Chips Ahoy.

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I don't think of Time to Pretend as alternative really but it's the best song on your list imo.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

nada surf had some great indie tunes during that period. funny they began with "popular"...

grandaddy. "broken household appliance".

the apples in stereo. "she's telling lies".

The Strokes suck but there's merit to your argument because I never felt quite as into following music after '07, though I will say 2017 has been a terrific year.

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I think we're missing some Death Cab:

Marching Bands of Manhattan
Tiny Vessels

Postal Service - Such Great Heights

We Are Scientists - After Hours

Interpol - Narc

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team Mully & Hanley
team Meatpants

good call. "transatlantic."

more the shins. "saint simon".

Say what you will about The Strokes but they made the indie rock "sound" commercially viable. They paved the way for dozens and dozens of Pitchfork approved bands that have long been consigned to the 99cent bin of history.

Remember Tapes n Tapes?

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Yeah, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. But the apogee of Pitchfork hype was Black Kids, where they pushed these kids to the moon and then when the album came out, the only review was an apology.

Surprised no one went with "New Slang" for the Shins given its memorable use in The Sopranos AND Garden State (though the latter gets all the credit for breaking it).

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I was at CMJ the year Black Kids performed. Being there also helped confirm that I wanted no part of the radio business after college.

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We Used to Vacation - Cold War Kids

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-- source

Yeasayer - Ambling Alp

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps

311 - Amber

Postal Service - Such Great Heights

Empire of the Sun - Walking on a Dream

The XX - VCR

Edward Sharpe + The Magnetic Zeros - Home

That is a great song though.

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The Court will accord substantial deference to the government's immigration policies, particularly those that implicate matters of national security.

Ocean Breathes is a great example of Modest Mouse. Satin in a Coffin though is what I really love about them

Craig Finn has a great sense of songwriting. I love Lifter/puller too. I think Two Crosses is my fav from The Hold Steady

Yeah, Lifter/Puller is terrific...Star Wars Hips is probably my favorite from them.

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The Strokes- On the Other Side

Franz Ferdinand- Take Me Out


The Hives- Hate to Say I told you so

Whoa, bro, our Brothers' anthem to get chicks was always "Hey There, Delilah" Plain White T's. Chaz was the only homo who actually bought the cd but we were always playing that shit on the jukebox to get some ass. It worked like a charm. We never met any real Delilahs because that name is hella weird, brah. But this one chick was named Belinda, at some bar in DeKalb, so Troy would always be like "Hey there, Belinda", like a dumbass. But he still hooked it up, for realsies. Those were the days, my bromide.

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Dude, you are my bro.

"I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You"? The rougher original version was pretty good but they polished it way too much for the album and then it sucked.

Here it is.

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Almost any Hold Steady song Stay Positive and before. Slapped Actress, Stuck Between Stations, Barfruit Blues lead that pack.

From the s/t Broken Social Scene I submit Ibi Dreams of Pavement "and if god is what they made, cut the hands off believers" - awesome

The Antlers - Kettering, but Sylvia or Two would work just as well. Bear is of course great.

Titus Andronicus - Battle of Hampton Roads, not 2000-09 but might as well be. This might be the last truly great indie rock song.

Belle and Sebastian - Dress Up in You, its hard to believe the 21st century sexual revolution went from daydreaming on the DLR to spiked dildoes and violent clashes with police.

Dinosaur Jr - Were Not Alone

Bright Eyes - Train Under Water

I could really go on forever. Its very sad that this era in music has been followed by Beyonce worship and mumble rap about nonsense (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ia54sgbxDA), but the hands that killed it were its own. Turns out coopting a bunch of bad Zack Braff movies and embracing smug Evanston liberalism undermined its masculinity and turned people away. I get it, and really it wouldn't be such a bad thing if what replaced it wasn't so terrible.

No. That song has been PTFB since 2005.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Masculinity.
Indie rock.

Pick one.

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Not always the case, but the banjo garbage just destroyed its credibility forever. That culture described on Exile in Guyville existed for a long time after that record came out, and really only disappeared when college curriculums started including identity politics.

This

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That's a good song that I think I tend to overlook. Besides the closer, the stretch of "Fire Eyed Boy," "Windsurfing Nation," "Swimmers," "Hotel," (skip "Handjobs for the Holidays") and "Superconnected" is so so good. I listened to that album almost every day from February-May 2006.

I'm not sure I'm 100% on board with indie becoming effeminate and identity-politics-obsessed but I do know that my appreciation of the Afghan Whigs has grown in recent years. Dude wants to fuck and doesn't care who knows it. Glad someone says it.

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