We listened to a lot of independent releases at MusicZeitgeist in 2008 and not all of it was good. In fact, some of it was incredibly well recorded, but too much of it sounded the same: handclaps, 1950’s be-boppy, lo-fi, Disco-infused, melancholy boy-with-an-acoustic or girl-with-a-piano, Billy Holiday-biting tripe seemed to rule the roost.

But some of it was really, really good.

In selecting the best songs of 2008, my only criteria were that the album had to have been released within 2008 and that regardless of whether or not it was picked up by a major label distributor, that the album was independently recorded and produced before any ties to a major. This list is by no means comprehensive, but these are songs I liked a whole lot: