The Best Dream Pop Albums of the 2010s

Sub Pop shipped it with a DVD — a video for every song, each by a different director — which was a strange amount of faith to put in a band this size in 2010. Recorded in a converted church upstate with Chris Coady. 'Zebra' opens the album and sets every term that follows: Alex Scally's slide guitar looping over an organ, Victoria Legrand's voice arriving late and low.

Two Beach House records on one list is a choice, and here's the defence: Bloom does the same thing bigger, and closes with ten minutes of silence and a hidden coda that most streaming rips mangle. 'Myth' is the opening argument — one arpeggio held for four minutes, Legrand asking what comes after, and a chorus that lifts without anybody raising their voice.

Liz Harris recorded this on a residency in Aljezur, Portugal, with a piano, a four-track and an open window, and left everything in — rain, frogs, and at the very end a microwave beeping as the power comes back on. 'Clearing' is voice and piano with the sustain pedal down, mixed so close you can hear the felt on the hammers. Barely a dream pop record. Absolutely one.

Natalie Mering built a bedroom set inside a water tank to shoot the cover, then filled the album with the same sensation — everything familiar, everything underwater. Jonathan Rado of Foxygen produced it for Sub Pop. 'Andromeda' is the one that gets people: pedal steel sliding underneath, a soft-rock swell straight out of 1974, and a line about being tired of looking for love that lands harder every year.

El Paso's Greg Gonzalez had been quietly putting music out for five years when a 2012 track called 'Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby' went viral on YouTube and dragged him into an actual career. Partisan released the debut proper. 'Apocalypse' is the entire formula in one song: brushed drums, a guitar figure that never changes, and a whispered vocal people find either devastating or unbearable.

Johnny Jewel opened a ninety-minute album with a Neil Young cover, which is either arrogance or a thesis. 'Into The Black' takes 'Hey Hey, My My' apart down to a drum machine and Ruth Radelet's flat, unbothered delivery. Jewel had recently had his score for Drive turned down in favour of someone else's, and a lot of that disappointment clearly went straight into this record.

Seventeen years after So Tonight That I Might See, Hope Sandoval and David Roback turned up with another album and behaved as though nothing had happened in between. Bert Jansch plays on it, recorded before his death in 2011. 'California' is the proof of life: slide guitar, brushes, Sandoval singing about wanting to go home, at the exact unhurried tempo they walked away on.

Andrew Weatherall mixed it, which goes a long way to explaining why a guitar band from Los Angeles ends up sounding like a dub record in places. Stella Mozgawa had just joined on drums, replacing Shannyn Sossamon, and the rhythm section is the entire point. 'Undertow' does the trick best — two guitars circling in different keys, four voices in loose unison, nobody hurrying to resolve any of it.

After three albums built on Greek tragedy and Colette, Julia Holter sat down and wrote actual songs, and Domino got the best record of her career out of the decision. 'Feel You' opens with a harpsichord and a question about whether it rains in Mexico City, and the strings behind it are arranged like chamber pop rather than draped on as decoration. Nothing here happens by accident.

Strings, harpsichord, a flute and a guest rap verse from Cities Aviv — not remotely what anyone expected from a band who had made their name on cheap reverb and two chords. It arrived on Bayonet, the label Dustin Payseur set up himself. 'Sugar' is the pivot point: the same jangling guitar as before, except now a string section answers it back.

Harriette Pilbeam had one EP to her name when Heavenly signed her, and a Brisbane bedroom-pop story suddenly got a proper budget behind it. Keepsake spends the money on 1990s production — big gated drums, chorus pedal on everything. 'Obsessed' is the most shameless of the lot: a hook that could have been a Cranberries single, sung by someone who plainly grew up on exactly that.

London's Still Corners built their second Sub Pop album out of drum machines and Tessa Murray's voice pushed right to the front, which is not usually how this genre operates. Greg Hughes writes and produces the whole thing himself. 'The Trip' rides a motorik pulse for four minutes with a synth arpeggio doing the driving — much closer to a night-drive record than a shoegaze one.

Justin Vallesteros made all of it alone in Stockton, California, and sent it to Captured Tracks, which in 2011 was precisely the label taking that kind of call. 'After the Moment' is the song that got passed around: a bassline doing the melodic heavy lifting, a chorus-drenched guitar answering it, and a vocal mixed like it's slightly embarrassed to be in the room.

Kevin Parker produced it while he and Melody Prochet were together, some of it in Perth and some in France, and his fingerprints are all over the drum sound. 'I Follow You' makes the best case for the collaboration: a bassline that could have come off a Tame Impala record, French vocals floating a long way above it, and a phaser sweep that keeps swallowing the whole mix.

A Kate Bush cover is what got Jack Tatum noticed — his version of 'Cloudbusting' went round the blogs well before anyone had heard the album, which he made in a bedroom in Blacksburg, Virginia, while still enrolled at Virginia Tech. 'Chinatown' is the one everybody keeps: a guitar line high and thin as a bell, over a drum machine that never once gets louder.

Trevor Powers was 22 and living in Boise when he made an album about his own anxiety and sent it off to Fat Possum. Every song pulls the same move — starts tiny, ends enormous — and somehow it never wears out. '17' is the template: a two-note keyboard figure, a voice buried in reverb, and then four minutes in the guitars arrive and take the roof off.