Photo by reyguy

The nominees for the 2008 Independent Music Awards have been announced. The following artists have been nominated for the album of the year.

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible (Merge)
Band Of Horses - Cease To Begin (Sub Pop)
Battles - Mirrored (Warp)
Beirut - The Flying Club Cup (Ba Da Bing)
El-P - I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (Definitive Jux)
Justice - † (Downtown / Vice / Ed Banger)
Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? (Polyvinyl)
Panda Bear - Person Pitch (Paw Tracks)
Radiohead - In Rainbows (self-released)
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights (Daptone)
Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Merge)
The National - Boxer (Beggars Banquet)

You should vote. The great thing about the PLUG voting process is you can listen to a complete song from each album right on their website before you make your decision. The songs stream into each other so you can start it up and do something else while you listen. Furthermore, we’ve written about some of these albums on Brontosaur.us if you would like to reference some of the music we are streaming here.

Photo by korymatthew

Beirut’s The Flying Club Cup is achingly beautiful. If you aren’t familiar with Beirut, their sound is heavily influenced by Balkan folk music (think Gypsy). Many of their songs sound as if they are from another world and another time, especially the first album Gulag Orkestra. But others such as “After the Curtain” are as accessible as any song by The Postal Service. Zack Condon and his mighty band expand and build upon the sound of Gulag Orkestra on The Flying Club Cup. The music is less heavily influenced by the Balkans, but the same richness and texture is still there: strings, horns, percussion. We really appreciate Beirut, much like Sufjan Stevens and Arcade Fire, for pushing indie rock music beyond the four/four-guitar-bass-drum-kit formula, however tried and true it may be.

From Gulag Orkestra

“After the Curtain”

From The Flying Club Cup

“The Sunday Smile”

“The Penalty”