5. Fleet Foxes,  Helplessness Blues 

I don't think I've listened to any other album in the mornings this year as much as Helplessness Blues. "The Cascades" is the most soothing song to rub the sleep out of my eyes and browse the morning headlines to. Helplessness Blues has a tormented backstory: in 2009, the band spent $60,000 recording songs they ended up scrapping. Frontman Robin Pecknold's girlfriend of five years broke up with him because of the stress the album put on their relationship. He then jumped into a number of side projects to give him a break from the the album. He was sure that it would come out by 2010; it was released in February of 2011. There’s something trite here about pressure and coal and diamonds, but I’ll spare you — just listen to the album.  — Maura Hehir 

Listen: “Helplessness Blues”

4. Tom Waits, Bad As Me

Waits delivered a career summary with Bad As Me: it’s everything you’ve loved about his past work, delivered in a voice that’s never felt stronger, with concise songwriting and production. Familiar collaborators Marc Ribot and Keith Richards return, giving Bad As Me a family reunion-type feel. The songs are still by turns tender and odd, but Waits’ old-man indignance on “Hell Broke Luce” shows that he’s not yet done chronicling the downtrodden — he’s just summoned a righteous anger to match his always-affecting sentimentality. — A.H.

Listen: “Hell Broke Luce”

3. tUne-yArDs, w h o k i l l 

w h o k i l l marks Merrill Garbus’ transition from a one-woman DIY project to a fully-fledged band, and the group's first studio release is riotous, colorful, and bold. Every song is a journey through Garbus’ expansive musical vocabulary — the album gleefully blends disparate fragments like the drum patterns of dub and the chanted vocals of Afrobeat. On "Killa," Garbus bleats, "I'm a new kind of woman." If that's true, I hope there’s a whole army of new women following in tUnE-yArDs' footsteps, because the world needs more music like this. — C.M.

Listen: “Killa”

2. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake

PJ Harvey’s superbly crafted Let England Shake, the concept album that won her the coveted Mercury Prize in 2011, deals largely with World War I. But Harvey’s visceral lyrics keep the album from veering into lecturing shrillness, and the soft, autoharp-infused accompaniments bump up nicely against the rawness of the subject matter. The battlefield imagery is disturbing at times: soldiers fall "like lumps of meat," and trees are hung with severed limbs in "The Words That Maketh Murder."  Her conflicted feelings towards England inform every song: “You leave a taste,” she informs her homeland in “England” —  “a bitter one.” For an unusually gripping and even-handed concept album dealing with a lofty and often broadly-painted subject, Let England Shake is nothing short of a triumph. — M. C.

Listen: “Let England Shake”

1. Adele, 21 

When “Rolling in the Deep” hit every radio station in existence simultaneously over the summer, it was labeled a “crossover hit,” a definition that seems redundant — nothing translates across musical spectrums like a broken heart. Getting dumped is the fucking worst.  And God strike down whoever says “everything’s gonna be all right.” When you’re in the throes of heartache, advice falls on deaf ears. And throughout 21, Adele isn’t offering any. Instead she’s a vessel, giving you the chance to belt out what you’ve been feeling all this time but couldn’t put words to. She holds your hand, and strokes your neck, and waits. She knows you may not come out of this unscathed — none of us do — but that, eventually, you will come out of it. — Rick Paulas

Listen: “Someone Like You”

Runners-Up:  Florence + The Machine, Ceremonials; The Black Lips,  Arabia Mountain; Fucked Up, David Comes to Life; The Roots, Undun; Wilco, The Whole Love; The Black Keys, El Camino; Battles, Gloss Drop; Gilian Welch, The Harrow & the Harvest; Liturgy, Aesthetica