A decade after alt-rock peaked culturally (if not yet commercially), indie rock did the same, but it was a different world—for starters, you rarely heard this music on the radio. More often, you had to find it online, usually at Pitchfork.com, arguably never closer to the zeitgeist since then, especially when it placed Arcade Fire’s Funeral on top of its year-end best albums list. I don’t think I was even aware of the band until this happened, and I spent most of the year writing for a competing website (albeit a far less buzzy one.)

The playlist I’ve assembled for 2004 contains so much mid-oughts indie-rock royalty: in addition to my favorite Funeral track, there’s Sufjan Stevens, Franz Ferdinand, Neko Case, Ted Leo and Tegan and Sara. Plus, a handful of relatively obscure but likeminded artists I was assigned to review, including Tamas Wells, Marit Bergman, Tompaulin and Paul Brill, whose New Pagan Love Song (represented by its title track) almost had an 100 Albums entry of its own.

We also have a few ‘90s holdovers putting out some of their best work: a single from PJ Harvey’s unjustly forgotten Uh Huh Her; Morrissey’s second-last great song to date (which rhymes “bullet” with “gullet”); The Magnetic Fields, triumphant at the impossible task of a follow-up to 69 Love Songs; and Sam Phillips with one of her loveliest ever ballads (effectively used in Gilmore Girls and its Netflix sequel).

As always, it’s the oddities I adore the most: the Delays’ wonderfully androgynous vocalist, Loretta Lynn’s beguiling spoken word memoir-piece, Madeleine Peyroux’s so-crazy-it-just-might-work cocktail jazz Leonard Cohen cover. However, let me direct your attention to A Girl Called Eddy (aka Erin Moran (not the Happy Days star)). Her elegant, self-titled debut sounds like a cross between Aimee Mann and Dionne Warwick (with a hint of Karen Carpenter) and like nothing else put out in 2004. “The Long Goodbye” is such perfect, heartbreaking pop I never skip it whenever it comes up on shuffle. She hasn’t released anything since—does that make her this decade’s Jen Trynin?

Click here to listen to my 2004 playlist on Spotify:

1. Tompaulin, “Slender”
2. Bebel Gilberto, “Simplesmente”
3. Delays, “Nearer Than Heaven”
4. Jens Lekman, “You Are The Light (by which I travel into this and that)”
5. Sufjan Stevens, “To Be Alone With You”
6. Tamas Wells, “Even In The Crowds”
7. The Magnetic Fields, “I Thought You Were My Boyfriend”
8. Nellie McKay, “Ding Dong”
9. Rufus Wainwright, “Peach Trees”
10. A.C. Newman, “On The Table”
11. A Girl Called Eddy, “The Long Goodbye”
12. Feist, “One Evening”
13. Junior Boys, “Teach Me How To Fight”
14. Mark Mothersbaugh, “Ping Island/Lightning Strike Rescue Op”
15. Loretta Lynn, “Little Red Shoes”
16. Paul Brill, “New Pagan Love Song”
17. Kings of Convenience, “I’d Rather Dance With You”
18. Madeleine Peyroux, “Dance Me To The End of Love”
19. Tegan and Sara, “Downtown”
20. The Futureheads, “Meantime”
21. Marit Bergman, “Adios Amigos”
22. Arcade Fire, “Neighborhood # 3 (Power Out)”
23. Mr. Airplane Man, “How Long”
24. Neko Case, “The Tigers Have Spoken”
25. Air, “Venus”
26. The Divine Comedy, “Our Mutual Friend”
27. Sam Phillips, “Reflecting Light”
28. Scissor Sisters, “Mary”
29. Ron Sexsmith, “From Now On”
30. Morrissey, “First Of The Gang To Die”
31. PJ Harvey, “The Letter”
32. Franz Ferdinand, “The Dark of a Matinee”
33. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Me and Mia”