Cat Power · 2006 · She walked into Ardent Studios with the Memphis Rhythm Band and a stack of broken-hearted songs — no safety net, no lo-fi hiding place.

A Girl Called Eddy · 2004 · She sat on the follow-up for fifteen years. This one record made the wait almost worth it.

Various Artists · 2000 · A 2000-era compilation that sounds less like a cash-in and more like a crate digger's private mixtape, left in the tape hiss of seven-minute 12-inch singles.

Various Artists · 2001 · When you’ve heard the original one too many times, these remixes make you remember why you bought the song in the first place.

Yo La Tengo · 2000 · They made an album that sounds like the moment after you've finally stopped talking.

The Corrs · 2000 · Mutt Lange produced three tracks, the rest were pure Corrs, and the mix of fiddle, tin whistle, and radio-ready chorus never sounded better.

Erykah Badu · 2000 Spin it Again - She followed up Baduizm with something weirder, warmer, and braver.

OutKast · 2000 Spin it Again - Three-inch tape, a basement Hammond organ, and two rappers who trusted each other enough to leave the beat on the bathroom floor.

Grizzly Bear · 2009 Spin it Again - Four guys in a stone monastery, refusing to use a click track, and making the most airtight folk-rock of the decade.

Fleet Foxes · 2008 Spin it Again - The debut that made harmonies sound like they were growing out of the forest floor.

Arcade Fire · 2004 Spin it Again - They went to a church with a tape machine and three dead grandparents, and made the sound of a roof being lifted off.

Amy Winehouse · 2006 Spin it Again - Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi built a time machine out of vintage tape and a horn section, and Amy Winehouse walked in with a broken heart and a voice that didn't need correcting.

The Avalanches · 2000 Spin it Again - Made in a bathroom with a busted Sony headphone and a stack of charity shop records that would take two years to turn into the only album that ever sounded this happy and this broken at the same time.

Animal Collective · 2009 Spin it Again - The only album that sounds like a church service on a psychedelic carnival ride, and it's also an audiophile benchmark.

The Flaming Lips · 2002 Spin it Again - An album about a girl fighting robots that somehow ends up being the warmest, most human record of the 2000s.

Wilco · 2002 Spin it Again - Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett built a cathedral of tape hiss and broken radio — and the label panicked.

Steely Dan · 2000 Spin it Again - Twenty years between albums, and they still sound like nobody else.

Lhasa de Sela · 2003 Spin it Again - She married the road and made an album this haunted.

Mariza · 2002 Spin it Again - She sang without headphones, in a room where you could hear the strings breathe, and that made all the difference.

Éliane Elias · 2008 Spin it Again - She sounds like she's sitting six feet away, the piano a whisper, the strings a memory of ocean air. A pianist who never lets her hands forget she's a singer, too.