There was no way I could stop at 10 albums this year. So, I stopped at 11. Here are what I'm calling my favorite albums of 2009. You may have people (read:everyone) including grizzly bear and animal collective in their lists. I'm sorry, I love some of their songs, but they are not great albums in my opinion. No cohesion, no pushing boundaries, and sometimes just too boring. I love both bands, but they are top performers, not top albums. I've included my favorite track off the album (or if that was already on my top 40 list, another fav), and a .torrent link if you wanna grab the whole album. Enjoy.
#11 Miike Snow - Miike Snow
As a bunch of ex top40 (included B. Spears) producers this band is pretty amazing. They've changed their ways and come out with a fantastic album thats not factory crap. Animal is the obvious standout track with a catchy hook and great video. The song I've included in a more down tempo track but it really showcases their ability to layer melodies and sounds to get a really good beat going in your head. The whole album really covers a lot of ground in terms of genres. Song for No One seems like a track they tried to sell to Peter Bjorn and John that never worked out. In the end I think it sounds better on Miike Snow.
#10 March of the Zapotec - Beirut / Holland - Realpeople
Mr. sexiest voice alive/ best french horn player around brings us a double EP in 2009. March of the Zapotec continued Zach Condon's regionally themed based music. This time he spent time in Oaxca Mexico to try to impart some local flavor into the album. The Akara is a great track that sounds the hipster orchestrated version of a dia de los muertos death march. On the other side we have Holland, credited to his Realpeople moniker. This is a more electronic form of Beirut which both scared and excited me at first, or to understand i think the analogy, Beirut:RealPeople :: Death Cab:The Postal Service sums it up best. I've chosen 'The Concubine' from this EP to showcase. Its not often that I find the music I want to listen is actually beautiful, but there aren't many other words to describe this track.
#9 Album - Girls
I actually had this album for three months before giving it a solid third or fourth listening. After a suggestion by ChrisS, a repeat listen really did it for me, I've loved the album ever since and I think this is a definitely a band to watch in the future. Although I've been more recently gravitating towards discs that I love straight off the bat, its always the ones that take a few times to listen to, to really get to know, that stick with you forever. I've highlighted the track Hellhole Ratrace. Its a throwback song with lyrics that are great for a 20-something. Fun fact: the lead singer escaped from a north carolina hippie/christian cult that rose mcgowan and he were both in until around 14. Now the excessive drug use makes sense.
#8 Psychic Chasms - Neon Indian
#7 Grand - Matt & Kim
You have a drum and a keyboard. Thats it. No fancy guitar rifts and layered lush melodies to hide behing. The music has to be good or it would be obvious. Simplicity is often harder when it comes to good song writing. Matt's somehow both sorrow laden and yet triumphant voice pairs so well with Kim's serious beat talent. All this, perfectly set and descriptive of the gritty LES and brooklyn thing that for its problems, still always rocks. We won't run out of loving songs about New York if they keep coming like I'll Take Us Home. If you could right the song to drunken progression of excitement, despair, carefree, sleep, ugh, repeat, after a debaucherous night of really living, that would be every song on this album.#6 
Lungs - Florence + the Machine
#5 Manners - Passion Pit
I think if I had to genetically engineer a band form the ground up it would sound exactly like Passion Pit. A drummer with torrettes, falsetto vocals that aren't ashamed to scream out a little off key for effect, heavy use of synths, bass guitar melody, and sampling. I've chosen the first song of the album, which is a really great premonition of what you're in for on the rest of the album. Staccato thrashing interspersed with almost cutesy synth ditties, add in some wailing and you have yourself the most infectious yet respectable sounding music I've heard in years.
#4 Two Suns - Bat for Lashes
Truthfully, I didn't think I'd ever be hearing from Bat for Lashes after 2006's fur and gold. It was pretty great but it felt like it must have dried up whatever creativity well the lead singer had. I was half wrong. It took contriving a second personality (pearl) to flesh out this high concept, 80s cure soaked album. Every song on it hits on all cylinders, its truly a master work. I have to restrain myself from 5 starring every song in iTunes. An incredible force to see live or even just footage from shows, the whole atmosphere and persona of the album are exuded by the whole band. In the end the music and spectacle is all a little fantastically weird, but they own it. Seriously, we've broken the top 5 here, you better get this album.
#3 It's Blitz! - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Really, I am now utterly convinced that the YYY's cannot make a bad album if they wanted to. Always two steps ahead they came out with a dancier, darker, and pretty damn fantastic. Energetic and balls to the wall brooklyn rockers at some points, and softer ballads that rival Maps in emotion and simplicity. For a band with a singer, a drummer, and a guitarist, they continually produce some of the freshest, most interesting music around. I've highlighted first track of the album, "Zero". It really pushes Karen O's range, but she's a boss bitch and can totally handle it. The song is one big build up just exploding at the end.
#2 xx - The xx
A very late contender in the best album of the year race, I had to be sure I wasn't putting it up so high because it was still just so fresh in my mind and on constant repeat on my iPod. But no, the september UK released album is the real deal. I find it really hard to explain this album to people. Practically every song on the album is the song. Somehow, they eschewed going for gimmky-hooks or obvious pigeon-toeing influences and melodies. For a bunch of 20 year olds, I am amazed and mostly jealous that they put out such an adult album. Which brings me to my next point, coming out of the same R&B aficionado school as Hot-Chip, Discovery, and Portishead, the xx makes an interesting interpretation of R&B history. Instead of synthesizing hip-hop musical elements and repackaging them all indie friendly, they've distilled down other elements and reinfused them into a separate musical history of radiohead, interpol and the like. Every word out of the singers lips sounds like a come on or pillowtalk, layered over heavy drum machine and bass guitar; a reinterpretation of sex laden lyrics and bass heavy sampling style of hip-hop. Some have said they don't really like the singers voices. They are definitely on the affectless side and certainly not the best singers ever. But indifferent atitude meshes so well, and truthfully this duo isn't singing so much for the sound, but for what they have to say.
#1 Fever Ray - Fever Ray
Well it isn't much of a surprise, I did call this during my early summer countdown. Fever Ray still managed to be the best thing I've found this year and arguably, this decade. Karen Dreijer has truly shown herself to be a musical mastermind growing, pruning, and sharpening what she accomplished with the Knife. She's created a lush musical landscape that is simultaneously complexly verdant and sullenly doleful in both styling and lyrical content. After nearly hundreds of listens and one concert where she hid under a buffalo hide for most of the show, I've realized that the appeal of this album is its infusion of infusion of animalistic and pagan musical mindsets. By going back in the past for influence, Karen has written the modern soundtrack to our northern hemisphere nordic techno-nomad lives. Everything has the illusion of being spontaneous and shamanistic and magical but underneath doesn't deny its deliberately cold and computer generated nature. Its mirrored by the fact that every song has since been remixed from their icy forrest-scapes into floor-ready dance anthems. This album isn't for everyone, but if your willing to have an album force itself upon you to make you listen to it alone in a dark room, you can't pass this up.