Right up there with OK Computer as one of those albums that comes around only once in a generation. It's earth-shattering in its understated, cadenced beauty, managing to limn the full breadth of our confused times in hums and whispers through eleven essential songs. Perhaps the album that saved the album, YHF is the measuring stick for musical richness and lyrical resonance in the new millennium.

After OK Computer, Radiohead could've easily churned out a clone—Thom Yorke certainly doesn’t want for angst. But instead, they chose to be bold. They chose to weave together sprawling paeans to confusion like “Everything in its Right Place,” “The National Anthem,” “How to Disappear Completely,” “Optimistic,” and “Idioteque.” And music is only the better for their unshakable creative valor.

With vocals that evoke Lou Reed and a garage rock, proto-punk esthetic that hearkens back to Big Star, Cream, and the Velvet Underground and peppers that sound with irresistible pop sensibilities, the garage rock revolution of the early 2000s began and ended here. Definitely download the title track, "Hard to Explain," "The Modern Age," "Barely Legal" and "Someday."

The very apex, at least so far, of Grizzly Bear's short career—and of popular music in the new millennium—this album is a consummation of all of their initial promise. With sluggish but beautiful balladry that often slips into high-octave psychedelia, the Brooklyn outfit miss by only one spot crafting the finest, most gratifying record of the decade. “While You Wait for the Others.”

The Stripes, along with the Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, are often credited with the revival of garage rock. However, when listening to material like the epic "Seven Nation Army," one wonders whether either of the other two acts could, in their entire songbooks, find a cut to match it. For as much as the Strokes were artistic, the Stripes are assertive. See "Black Math," "In the Cold, Cold Night."

Spoon are to rock-n'-roll what Beckett was to high modernism--both manage to strip their work down to the bare minimum, and then wring out from it all they possibly can, crafting towering, titanic works of art from small, simple things. See "Small Stakes," "The Way We Get By," "Stay Don't Go," "Jonathan Fisk," "Paper Tiger," "Back to the Life" and "Vittorio E."

Panda Bear's first solo outing turns out the twelve-minute-long epic, "Bros.," and ends up being one of the indispensable releases of the decade--yet another sign of Animal Collective's cosmic influence on (and dominance of) music in the new millennium.