One will not be able to actually gauge what music is important until this stupid decade is behind us. Some of MY personal favorites, in no specific order, are:

The Walkmen: Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone

Erase Errata: At Crystal Palace

Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions: Bavarian Fruit Bread

Sonic Youth: Sonic Nurse

Peaches: The Teaches Of Peaches

Sun Kil Moon: Ghosts of the Great Highway

Cat Power: You Are Free

Miss Kitten & the Hacker: First Album

Calla: Collisions

.....not to mention all of the amazing music I've been introduced to in the Request & Recommendation thread, like Apostle of Hustle, Feist, Saturday Looks Good To Me, Neko Case, etc....

sorry, i mixed up the order of "music" and "baby" in the title of gwen's album. at least the albums are in the right order though.

i really hate this no editing after ten minutes thing.

pete yorn- musicforthemorningafter, day i forgot, nightcrawler

juliana hatfield - beautiful creature, in exile deo, made in china, and all her side projects

fiona - extraordinary machine

elliott smith - from a basement on a hill

joanna newsom - the milk eyed mender
the yeah yeah yeahs - fever to tell

Oh yuck. This list is so middle-class and dull. It reads like it was written by a Beck fan.