The Best Indie Pop Albums of the 2010s

Every sad banger of the last fifteen years is doing a Robyn impression, and 'Dancing On My Own' is the original — crying in the middle of the dancefloor, Grammy-nominated for it. Body Talk landed in November 2010 on her own Konichiwa Records, gathering that year's two Body Talk mini-albums into one statement. She owned the label, the template, and the decade that followed.

That saxophone riff opening 'Run Away With Me' might be the most replayed three seconds of 2015. E•MO•TION came out in Japan that June before the world got it in August via School Boy and Interscope, sold modestly, and then did something stranger than charting: it became a cause. The internet elected Carly Rae Jepsen indie royalty, and the songs back the coronation.

Molly Rankin grew up in Cape Breton's most famous musical family and wrote a jangle-pop proposal every college station in America accepted: 'Archie, Marry Me,' the song that pushed this 2014 Polyvinyl debut to the top of the CMJ album chart. Fuzzy guitars, deadpan longing, hooks you'd swear were thirty years old. The dowry line alone earns the ranking.

Claire Boucher built Art Angels alone — wrote it, produced it, played it — and handed 4AD the brightest pop record of 2015 by way of the strangest imagination in it. 'Kill V. Maim' is sung, per Grimes herself, by Al Pacino's Godfather character reimagined as a gender-switching vampire, and it still hits harder than most radio. Year-end polls put the album at No. 1 everywhere from NME to Stereogum.

Three sisters from the San Fernando Valley made soft rock cool again on their 2013 debut and took Days Are Gone to No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart — major-label border case, flagged, but the internet claimed them the moment 'The Wire' dropped. That song remains the cleanest breakup logic ever set to a strut: sorry, it's over, clap on the backbeat.

Glasgow gave the decade its sharpest synth-pop debut in 2013: The Bones of What You Believe, on Virgin at home and Glassnote in the States. 'The Mother We Share' had already introduced Lauren Mayberry's voice in 2012 — bright as glass, cutting as anything on the record — and the album built a whole cathedral around it. Arena synths, club heartbreak, zero filler up front.

Mark Foster was writing commercial jingles when he sketched a breezy little song about a troubled kid — and 'Pumped Up Kicks' spent eight straight weeks at No. 3 on the Hot 100, whistling the whole way. Torches, his band's 2011 Columbia/Startime debut, runs far sunnier than its famous single's subject; the craft that sold cereal turns out to sell choruses even better.

Bangor, Northern Ireland is a seaside tourist town, which is exactly the joke in Tourist History — the 2010 debut Two Door Cinema Club handed to French tastemaker label Kitsuné. 'What You Know' is the one still soundtracking every festival sunset: pin-neat guitars at dance-music tempo. It won the Choice Music Prize for Irish album of the year, and the trio gave the money to charity.

Listen past the fizz of Gossamer and it's one of the decade's heaviest records: Michael Angelakos made his 2012 Columbia release inside a bipolar crisis he discussed openly that summer, canceling tour dates to get treatment. 'Take a Walk' leads with debts, immigrants, and shame — dressed in synths so bright the radio never noticed. Candy shell, difficult center; the contrast is the whole art.

Michelle Zauner went home to Oregon when her mother got sick, and Psychopomp — released on tiny Yellow K in April 2016, picked up by Dead Oceans that August — is what she carried out of the grief. 'Everybody Wants to Love You' became the breakout: two minutes of glitter over the saddest backstory in the bin. Her memoir made bestseller lists later; the album told it first.

Bethany Cosentino wrote an entire album about a crush, a cat, and California, and Mexican Summer put her cat Snacks right on the 2010 cover, as deserved. 'Boyfriend' led Crazy for You's charge: surf fuzz, girl-group sighs, and the least complicated want in indie pop. Bobb Bruno's guitars keep it woozy; the songs keep it eternal. Summer, pressed onto vinyl.

Ridgewood, New Jersey doesn't sound like a scene, which is partly the point: Real Estate turned suburban nothing-afternoons into Days, their 2011 Domino album of perfect jangle. 'It's Real' makes the manifesto plain — verses about drives and lawns resolving into a chorus with no words at all, just oohs, because words would only slow it down. The gentlest great record of its decade.

Capitol shelved version after version of Sky Ferreira's debut — scrapped titles, scrapped sessions, three years of limbo — before Night Time, My Time finally escaped in October 2013 with a Gaspar Noé photograph on the cover. 'You're Not the One' shows what the wait protected: bruised eighties pop sung like a grudge held gorgeously. The industry cautionary tale that doubled as a classic.

A webcam video called 'Pretty Girl' made Claire Cottrill famous in 2017; Immunity, her 2019 Fader Label debut co-produced with Rostam of Vampire Weekend fame, proved the viral moment was the least interesting thing about her. 'Bags' is the keeper — a crush dissected in real time over drums that never land quite where you expect — and it turned up on year-end lists everywhere from Rolling Stone to the New York Times.