“The song’s the thing,” as someone once wrote and and a gush of self-confession and hashtag-irony this year saw the world come out of the closet en masse and embrace perfect three minute melodic slabs in all their naked, bubblegum-skinned glory.

Yes, in 2014, your doubting, Swans-vinyl hoarding, Linn turntable owning older brother finally gave in and admitted that “Shake It Off” was the song he found solace in when life got just a little too stressed. The smug and the converted were united as one and everyone agreed that Charli XCX could be as revolutionary as, erm, Shellac.  lineofbestfit

Flowers – Young Oscar Wilde bemoaned that “youth is wasted on the young”. Now I get his argument for his wishing to combine the vitality of the young with the experience and wisdom of the old…

From the get go, vocalist and bassist Rachel Kenedy declares she “would never tire of this / and if I do, then bury me beside you”. Everything sounds so pristine; the guitars chime spotlessly and Kenedy’s voice is one of warm, rich yearning calibrated to utmost precision. From any other voice, such a statement would be met with a groan and eyeroll, but from Kenedy, there’s an effusive restraint; at once, she conveys both the naïve joy and green apprehension of youth thelineofbestfit

Gold-Bears – Yeah, Tonight wastes no time establishing a vigorous blitz of energy and bravado. Immediately, cymbals start crashing and riffs begin slicing through the air while lead singer Jeremy Underwood wields his voice alongside the sinuous surge of noise. Emma Kupa, of the now-defunct London band Standard Fare, is the euphonious missing piece to Gold-Bears’ music, lending her harmonies to intensify the band’s already charismatic pop melodies.  pitchfork

Allo Darlin’ – Bright Eyes twee with a skip in its step and abundant casually excellent guitar playing…the sound of sunshine peeking through the clouds. “I feel better hangin’ out with you” is about as plain as you can put it, and when you do simple this well, there’s no reason to complicate things. stereogum

Comet Gain – ‘Sad Love’ and Other Short Stories “…gingham, paisley all that she wore.” In one fell swoop, Comet Gain manage to conjure up a visual universe, using only a few signifiers to draw in a plethora of influences.

New track ”Sad Love’ And Other Short Stories’ for instance, matches joyous Dexy’s style soul pop against lush, violin drenched arrangement. Deeply English and immediately contagious clashmusic

Withered Hand – Black Tambourine Older and wiser? You’re having a laugh. Getting older makes you feel vulnerable; fearful for your knees and your loved ones; unsure of everything when you used to know it all. You cry at the most ridiculous films. Look in the mirror and see your ancestors. As for your teeth, and gravity: Jesus. You fall apart.

‘Black Tambourine’ salutes its legendary DC noise-pop namesake, and stars that band’s wondrous Pam Berry on backing vocals. The rest of the album features a role-call of musical comrades and kindred spirits… This collective ethos culminates in a gospel-fuelled, euphoric finale, full of voices and love and hope and brass fanfares, and an abiding, over-riding message: you are not alone. thequietus

Martha – 1997, Passing in the Hallway On paper, Martha are almost instantly dismisable; vegan, straight edge kids from Durham whose debut album, by their own account, is about “growing up weird”. They sound like a sixth form project taken too far.

But get past the paper, give them a listen, and there’s heaps to enjoy. Their melodic guitar pop and charming, deliberately naïve lyrics are truly infectious. They’ve been straddling the indiepop and pop punk scenes for some time now, playing alongside bands in the latter, but adorning the t-shirts of countless people at indiepop festival Indietracks last summer.

There’s an overwhelming youthfulness to the album; it’s a sort of coming of age record which feels like reading 10 years’ worth of the band’s diaries. It’s packed with memories, anecdotes and the sort of confused tales that linger in friendship groups for decades. As Nathan explains in the album’s accompanying press release: “There’s the old cliché that when you’re young you think you’re invincible and that everything will last forever – the album is about looking back and reflecting on past moments in your life, past friendships and relationships, accepting the uncertainty and fragility of those things and moving forward positively.” musicomh

Parquet Courts – Instant Disassembly “I kept explaining I was too tired to continue to speak,” Andrew Savage mumbles heavily on “Instant Disassembly”. You might recognize this feeling: You might’ve said something like this yourself, sunk into a chair and feeling the sudden accumulation of a night’s drinking, like someone is pressing down on your skull with a hardcover dictionary pitchfork

Ought – Habit recalls the jittery intensity of David Byrne and even a vexed Stephen Malkmus. Influenced by such heavyweights, Beeler’s mesmerizing performance effortlessly carries the song, while twinkling and jangly guitars slowly build and crescendo around him consequenceofsound

Preoccupations – Continental Shelf This one has a strange weather about it: Dark and unwieldy, with stormy dissonance, gloom-drunk melodies, ghostly cheerleader coos, and the brief employment of the “Be My Baby” beat  for good measure. pitchfork

Frankie Cosmos – Birthday Song “Just because I am a certain age,” Kline matter-of-factly sings at the top of “Birthday Song,” “Doesn’t mean that I am any older than I was yesterday.” At just 68 seconds, “Birthday” never seems to be in any particular hurry to get where it’s going pitchfork

Future Islands – Seasons (Waiting on You) judging Seasons (Waiting on You) by Future Islands as a song in its own right will be tricky. They’ll have likely first come across it via the Baltimore band’s Letterman performance back in March, one of the year’s most memorable pop culture moments. In that clip, Samuel T Herring takes on multiple pop personas simultaneously: he swivels his hips like Elvis; he thumps his chest like Springsteen; he shimmies across the floor like a Northern Soul devotee and, during one genuinely confounding moment, unleashes a spine-chilling death-metal roar. It’s so deeply strange and mesmerising that it’s hard to forget. theguardian

Ariel Pink – Put Your Number in My Phone Like all his best work, it feels like a graft of two slightly incompatible-but-similar pop songs. The lyrics are full of “babys” and blandishments that turn weird when you listen to the margins: “There’s magic in the air/ The night sky greets your face like a mystery uncovered“—was that written in a language other than English first? Just to remind you those other two pitchers are close by, Pink sneaks in a voicemail (an old tactic, dating back to his earliest releases), this time from an audibly annoyed girl who hasn’t heard from him in awhile. pitchfork

Perfume Genius – Queen Hadreas unifies his lyrical and musical ambitions into the most forthright, ornate, lustrous and “pop” moment of his career… It’s a perfect merger of intent and execution, but there’s still the tension that makes Perfume Genius such an uneasy, unique listen pitchfork

Real Estate – Talking Backwards At their best,  Real Estate sound effortless, possessing an unnatural ability to weave together plainspoken melodies and intricate guitar arrangements without sounding as if they’ve broken a sweat—and that’s exactly where the band is on “Talking Backwards” pitchfork

TOPS – Way to be Loved filled with crisp, modest guitar riffs, not-so-modest bass lines, and Jane Penny’s soft but firm vocals. It’s a fantastic statement of purpose for an album opener stereogum

A G Cook – Beautiful shows the gleefully disorienting dynamics going on in Cook’s music. He fills the music with pitch-shifted vocals, unpredictable structures, and a sonic palette that makes me picture a sledgehammer made out of candy. It’s all tuned towards creating an incredibly bright, joyful piece of dance music stereogum

Hannah Diamond – Every Night doubles down on the uneasy slickness and hyperreality that populates the rest of her work. Built around a slightly-too-sweet synth loop and pulsing drum pattern that might have otherwise found a home on one of label head A G Cook’s own compositions, she uses the track as a basis for lyrics that are a little more bizarre and self-reflexive than your typical tale of romantic pining… “I like the way you know that I like how you look.” Rather than embrace simple sentimentality, she calls into question the role that physical attraction plays in romantic relations, and in a way that’s subtle enough that it doesn’t detract from the track’s saccharine synth-pop. After all, even when she’s delving into more serious subject matters, Diamond is still ultimately concerned with keeping up appearances.

Public Service Broadcasting – The Other Side it delivers poignant charges of drama, heroism and wonder northerntransmissions

Leonard Cohen – Slow is driven by witty wordplay regarding sex and mortality. So, yeah, it would appear that not too much has changed in the songwriter’s nearly 50-year recording career. “I’m lacing up my shoes/ But I don’t want to run/ I’ll get there when I do/ Don’t need no starting gun,” he blithely doles out in a raspy baritone, smirking and leaving it unclear whether the song is about slow sex or the race toward the grave. In the end, it’s both consequenceofsound

Slow Club – Not Mine To Love Those who’ve seen Slow Club live will know that Rebecca Taylor belts out big notes with the gale force of a Brit School graduate at an Andrew Lloyd Webber casting. This diva guise may be quashed with self-deprecating quips on stage, but on record – especially this one, their third – Taylor performs with both the rawness of heartache and an obvious hunger for fame. This new sense of ambition is crucial for a once-whimsical band, and is reflected in their banishment of nu-folk tweeness in favour of bombastic Motown soul theguardian. 

Fear of Men – Luna ghostly, glitzy dream pop can still sound vital and original in 2014. A lot of that comes from Jessica Weiss’ vocals and lyrics, which constantly shake the music into glaring reality. Here she emotionally cuts through the melodies with the fragile, softly sung lines, “What you want is bleached out by the sun, my weakness/ is waiting, couldn’t even shake what I’ve become/ I hate this, I hope you know that.” That last line is spoken so bluntly even as the music swells; it’s a thrilling struggle. stereogum

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Simple and Sure  a sparkling endorphin rush of catchy-as-all-hell early-’90s college rock. If you’re old enough, it might recall the Lightning Seeds or World Party. It’s just an awesome song stereogum

Alvvays – Next of Kin It’s easy to slot Alvvays into a neat lineage that starts in 1980s Glasgow and ends when teenagers with self-esteem issues stop buying vinyl. Easy, but overly convenient…They can do downbeat without being dour, funny without being distracting and pen melodies that send you swooning in approval. We can scarcely believe their self-titled debut album was originally snuck out on cassette for a music festival. drownedinsound

The War on Drugs -Red Eyes riding the night train to some ethereal destination with blurry vision and Springsteen on the brain stereogum

Sharon Van Etten – Tarifa “Tell me when / Tell me when is this over? / Chewed you out/ Chew me out when I’m stupid,” she sings over a muted swell of Hammond organ and bass clarinet. It is both euphoric and deeply, devastatingly sad, and it mimics the highs and lows of any love: When it is good, it is so good, but when it is over, it is everything pitchfork

Gruff Rhys – American Interior saw him following in the footsteps of 18th-century explorer John Evans, who spent 1792 hunting for a fabled Welsh-speaking Native American tribe. theguardian

Caribou – Can’t Do Without You A warm palette of distorted synth, ratting percussion and motif lyrical swirls… that recalls the halcyon days of summer before they’ve even begun. thelineofbestift

Sylvan Esso – Coffee  finds Meath and Sanborn building a wonderfully symbiotic relationship. Sanborn’s bass-heavy productions give Meath a chilly counterpoint even while she’s grounding him with her voice’s warm earthiness stereogum

Timber Timbre – Hot Dreams Saxophones are smokin’ and guitars twang, making Hot Dreams sound like the soundtrack to a western directed by David Lynch theguardian

Stanley Brinks and The Wave Pictures – Orange Juice they’ve turned the most depressive words in the verse into a fabulous celebration of life onechord

Ace Bushy Striptease – Team Jess (Fuck Logan and Dean)  For the uninitiated, perhaps the closest (kind of) well known band would be Los Campesinos!, yet where that collective are divisive and sometimes forcefully clever with their lyrics, thesoundofconfusionblog

Gingerlys – Better Hearts a pop gem indieforbunnies

A Sunny Day In Glasgow – In Love with Useless just about the only 21st century band to do anything original within the realm of shoegaze pitchfork

Young Romance – Pale just under two minutes… shot of audio adrenaline thelineofbestfit

The Happy Couple – Into The Woods might be described by some with the F word (folk) or the A word (art), yet it is also sparkling pop music through and through popmatters

The Yearning – If I Can’t Have You continue their love for 1960’s girl groups recordsilike

Teleman – 23 Floors Up a voice that’s best described as pure, clean and innocent… He sounds like a choir boy, basically. In a cool way, of course. musicomh

The Popguns – Alfa Romeo (it’s apparently about the legendary trumpeter Chet Baker but here we basically hear an aimless list of glamorous capital cities to match the aforementioned glossy automobile of Baker popmatters

The Very Most – Wond’ring

The Royal Landscaping Society – Goodbye  Despite the name of the band, don’t expect them to cut your lawn or trim your hedge.  However you can count on them to deliver some sweet pop music whenyoumotoraway

Colour Me Wednesday – Half A Life continue to assert the bouncy pop-rock tunefulness so expertly debuted on the band’s first long player undertheradar

Courtney Barnett – Pickles From the Jar a simple affair, with one ongoing loop of of chords,. But as far as Barnett trademarks, the lyrics are a straight shot, illustrating the differences between her and her girlfriend while revelling in the contrasts as opportunities to love. Like a great comedian (and she is absolutely funny) Barnett has a knack for exposing truth in the mundane and making it extraordinary. pitchfork

Angel Olsen – Unfucktheworld 11 smoldering folk-rock songs crackle and glow like a campfire, with album-opener “Unfucktheworld” setting the tone spin

Sleater-Kinney – Bury Our Friends this clear-sighted shout-along chorus makes Sleater-Kinney sound as if they indeed roam the Earth with us, reborn but ever-conscious of worldly matters, critiquing the inert dread of “our own Gilded Age” but never weighed down by the details pitchfork

Ex-Hex – Hot and Cold all about rock’n’Roll and having fun, not sometimes getting it right because not totally getting it right would be all wrong thefatangelsings

Jenny Lewis – She’s Not Me  digs deep into the dichotomy of desire and acceptance spin

Spoon – Do You  both tense and sunny, heavy and light. If the song is a late entry in the summer jam sweepstakes, it’s better suited to the buggy days of August than the heyday of July: “Someone get popsicles, someone do something ‘bout this heat.” Ultimately, “Do You” sounds like a song about marking transitions: summer into autumn, the 2000s into the 2010 pitchfork

Hinds – Bamboo One fairly average Madrid afternoon last month, pals Ana Garcia Perrote and Carlotta Cosials disappeared into a recording studio, and stepped out clutching two of the most perfectly ramshackle pop songs we’ve heard in ages thelineofbestfit

Desperate Journalist – Happening Taking their name in homage to the famed John Peel session in which The Cure berated ex-NME journalist Paul Morley for a less than favourable review… Desperate Journalist’s sound might positively bristle with the ghosts of the likes of The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, early REM, and The Smiths; … But far from the derivative retromaniacs that characterise the songs of many modern-day post punk and 80s indie inspired bands, these songs sound affectionate, knowing and not cynical, like a love letter to the bands they are influenced by, but filtered through each of their personalities godisinthetvzine

Eels – Mistakes of My Youth Steeped in the sepia of nostalgic reflection it may well be, but the buoyancy of the song’s gentle melody does accurately convey Everett’s mood of guarded optimism for the future goisinthetvzine

Dum Dum Girls – Rimbaud Eyes It’s like a Bangles anthem for Halloween night stereogum

Dean Wareham – The Dancer Disappears a dreamy, atmospheric song, filled to the brim with twinkling guitars and Wareham’s yearning, nostalgia-inducing croon consequenceofsound

Lunchbox – Everybody Knows Listening to Lunchbox Loves You can be compared to opening an actual lunchbox packed by your mother without consulting you beforehand.  You know that your mother loves you, because she is your mother… But the core question is whether the contents bear witness to the love.  I certainly can’t speak to the contents of your school lunches, and my lunches weren’t always ready for Master Chef.  However, I think you’ll like the ten course lunch that Tim Brown and Donna McKean have packed for you whenyoumotoraway

Fazerdaze – Jennifer  a bedroom-pop project filled with tranquil moments of ’80s guitar-pop nostalgia obscuresound

Wildhoney – Seventeen wonderfully noisy and beautifully melodic. thisithatsong

Marianne Faithful – Late Victorian Holocaust This isn’t a single. It’s a séance. Singing lyrics penned by Nick Cave, Marianne Faithfull sounds like a ghost recalling her life, drawing out her words slowly and carefully as though they’re all she has in this afterlife. pitchfork

Girl One and The Grease Guns – Driving Without Headlights (Once Again)  I suspect the group members’ names – Sissy Space Echo, Warren Betamax, Charles Bronson Burner and Bruce LeeFax – were selected some time after Christening whenyoumotoraway

Yumi Zouma – Alena There’s a vibrant, chill-pill pulse that ripples through their limpid pools of loveliness thelineofbestfit

Tirzah – No Romance Sad, detached, yet strangely warm vocals and excellent minimal production demonstrate just how much can be achieved with very, very little thelineofbestfit

King Creosote – Paupers Dough As part of the cultural programme around the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, King Creosote has soundtracked archive footage of Scottish people at work and play. thequietus

Radiator Hospital – Cut Your Bangs It demands attention with its sudden power chord intro, and beyond the lyrics about gnashing teeth and rabid animals, the track’s chorus is the undeniable star here pitchfork

Adult Mom – I Make Boys Cry A young woman explores her feelings for six songs in 10 minutes. rollingstone

Night Flowers – Embers Hard as it is to believe, even though seemingly thousands of Cure and Cure-influenced songs have contained either the word “night” or “flower” in their titles, we haven’t come across a “Night Flowers” yet… the chorus of “Embers” is what really matters, a simultaneous surge of fuzzed guitars and harmonized vocals that recalls shoegaze without its defense mechanisms, or twee indie-pop with more muscle.