Antony and the Johnsons · 2005 Spin it Again - A voice so specific it shouldn't work on paper, over orchestrations so perfectly restrained they make the grief land harder.

Rufus Wainwright · 2007 Spin it Again - Rufus Wainwright released a grand, forty-piece album in 2007 and then, almost in the same breath, this — twenty-three minutes of French chanson recorded in Montreal with his mother at the piano.

Keren Ann · 2002 Spin it Again - She sang in two languages with equal authority and Paris barely exported her — the rest of the world mostly missed this entirely.

Bon Iver · 2007 Spin it Again - He had mono, a broken relationship, and a TASCAM 8-track — and nothing about those circumstances explains why this sounds so good.

Corinne Bailey Rae · 2006 Spin it Again - Four million people bought this record, and it never once raised its voice to earn any of them.

Amy Winehouse · 2003 Spin it Again - Before the tabloids, before the beehive became a costume, there was this — a teenager from Southgate cutting a hip-hop jazz record that most forty-year-olds couldn't have pulled off.

Alela Diane · 2007 Spin it Again - She made this in Nevada City on a tape machine her dad gave her, and it sounds exactly like that.

Emmylou Harris & Patty Griffin · 2007 Spin it Again - The record you filed under 'nice' a decade ago has been waiting to tell you something you're finally ready to hear.

A Place to Bury Strangers · 2007 Spin it Again - Oliver Ackermann wired his own circuits, recorded in his own shop, and made the most destructive shoegaze record of the 2000s before anyone was paying attention.

Wooden Shjips · 2009 Spin it Again - Four people in a Richmond warehouse figuring out how little they needed to play before it became a religion.

Wovenhand · 2001 Spin it Again - The guy who made post-punk sound like a revival tent stripped it all back to one guitar and meant every word.

The Magic Numbers · 2003 Spin it Again - A self-circulated CDR from 2003 that sounds more finished than most albums with actual budgets.

Vic Chesnutt · 2002 Spin it Again - Michael Stipe signed this man, produced him with almost nothing, and the result outlasted most of what surrounded it.

Björk · 2001 Spin it Again - Matmos turned liposuction sounds into percussion and somehow this is the warmest record of 2001.

Carla Bruni · 2002 Spin it Again - Three million copies sold in France, and somehow it never crossed the channel — a spare, guitar-and-piano chanson debut that makes almost everything from 2002 sound overcrowded.

Low · 2002 Spin it Again - Mimi Parker plays drums like she's trying not to wake someone, and it sounds louder than anything.

Cowboy Junkies · 2004 Spin it Again - Recorded in their own Hamilton studio with no outside clock running, this is what the Junkies sound like when nobody is asking them to be anything.

Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions · 2001 Spin it Again - Colm Ó Cíosóig left My Bloody Valentine long enough to help Hope Sandoval make a record this quiet and this heavy.

Rilo Kiley · 2004 Spin it Again - The EP Rilo Kiley released the same year as their best album, which is exactly why nobody talks about it enough.

Jason Collett · 2008 Spin it Again - The BSS guitarist went to Montreal, hired the drummer who plays behind the beat on purpose, and made something Elliott Smith would have respected.