As I am at the unripe age of 24, thinking over the past decade means I am thinking over my entire teenager-hood, basically. So I’ve presented my faves in chronological order of release date, not of the order in which they touched my life.

1. Belle & Sebastian — “The Chalet Lines” (Scotland)

Belle & Sebastian’s 1996 album, If You’re Feeling Sinister, was my first foray into any music other than what blasted from the suburban radio, but I didn’t get around to it until I was a sophomore in High School seeking a soundtrack for brooding. To my family reunion in sunny Maine, I brought their 2000 follow-up CD. My brother and I would leave the adults behind and in the evening and lie on our cots, listening to Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant. The sad, moody “Chalet Lines” was our favorite track of all — though we had no idea what “chalet lines” were, or what any of the terrible things described in the ballad could actually do to a person.

We were children, trying desperately to feel adult things, which is what the mournful twee of B&S still sounds like to me.

2. Silver Jews  — “Horseleg Swastikas”

I found a copy of David Berman’s Actual Air in my local bookstore and absorbed the whole thing over shifts as a ticket taker in a local theater. The time between customers was perfectly fit to the length of a poem. And who better to fill that weird air-space of suburban commerce than Silver Jews lyricist David Berman? Just listen to those lyrics… “I’m drunk on a couch in Nashville / In a duplex near the reservoir / And every single thought is like a punch in the face / I’m like a rabbit freezing on a star.” Yes, that’s exactly what it feels like. Like what what feels like, I don’t know.

3. Mirah — “Mt. St Helens”

I broke out of the tomboy phase I was in thanks to K-Records, out of Portland. Mirah understood me, man. She understood teenage girls. A year later, I visited my friend Emily in college in the sweltering Boston summer. Mirah was playing in the girl’s basement and there was no air-conditioning and she made us all sit on the floor and then later, when she was done with her set, told us to hug our sweeties and make-out. This was my romantic phase. After my love for Mirah passed, love was dead.

4. Black Eyes — “Deformative”

I grew up in D.C. and was lucky enough to roam at the margins of the free shows put on by the dirty Dischord boys. I mean, the singer of this band was literally the Latin teacher at my high school. (That is true!) So when I first heard Black Eyes’ “Deformative,” I almost thought it had been written for me. Not that I’d been molested by a priest (I think that’s what the song is actually about), but that in its less-specific verses, the track is all about teen angst, longing, pebbles in your knees. “I’m 16, driving south from Baltimore / What will I say when I get home?” There was no more universal phrase to D.C. high-schoolers.

5. Felix Da Housecat — “She’s So Damn Cool”

I was living in London, getting into as much trouble as I possibly could in the summer after my Freshman year in college. There were Devin Dazzle posters all over the city — even in the lifts down to the Tube — and we’d hear these tracks, re-mixed, in the clubs up in Shoreditch, which we were ecstatic to slip into — as we would have been “carded” back in the States. I hear this song and I’m swaying in my measly dorm room, ecstatic to be free from the bounds of parents, teachers, everyone I knew. I was a different person there, and I listened to Felix Da Housecat.

6. Why? — “Fall Saddles”

I had to fit Why? on here somewhere. Though he’s only gotten better (Alopecia was the best whole record of the decade, in this reviewer’s opinion), Jonathan “Yoni” Wolf’s lyrics are standouts wherever you find them. I was introduced to this all via my San Fran-born college boyfriend Sophomore year, who would play Hymie’s Basement in the background of his life. Anyway, I chose “Fall Saddles” because it’s one of the least quirky and most genuinely emotional of Why?’s output. An homage from a son for his father, it’s a love-letter conducted via audio. As so many love letters are.

7. Jakobinarina — “His Lyrics Are Disastrous” (Iceland)

Senior year, my friend Kari and I were adventurous enough to venture to Iceland for our March Spring break, rent a car, and opt for a drive around the perimeter of the country — despite local warnings that so early in the season, the roads might get banked with snow. The local warnings turned out to be right. But we remained cheery. The only CD in our stick-shift, compact car was what Kari had bought in Rejkyavik — Jakobinarina’s EP — and it became our mantra. A six-man group of seventeen year-olds from Hafnarfjörður, the group’s energy was a perfect antidote to our physical desire to hibernate in this freezing cold. So when we got back to Rejkyavik, we just haaaad to go out dancing.

8. LCD Soundsystem — “Someone Great”

When I left the US for fun times in Hong Kong, I guess I imagined this playing on everyone’s speakers as they thought of me! Or really, this is how I thought of them. I remember running on the Bowen Road path around Hong Kong, listening to this and falsely mourning the love I’d left behind in the US. And later, listening to this while biking around Beijing lamenting the friends I had left behind in Hong Kong. This is a break-up song that’s about absence, displacement, about breaking-up with the world. Which is what I had thought was such a noble thing to be doing.

9. Animal Collective — “Brother Sport”

I missed everything about connecting to a place, and moved to Brooklyn where my family lived, and fell in love, and settled into a cheery cute apartment near the JMZ train. And I remember getting on the train and glancing at the iPod screen of the commuter beside me and seeing the purple and green cover of this album and musing, “Wow, all of Brooklyn is listening to the same album, all the time.” I would walk on the hot sidewalks listening to “Summertime Clothes,” feeling giddy in love and later, in Prospect Park, I’d go with a friend from Beijing to see the band play. I couldn’t believe how long they pro-longed the resolve on this song — which seems to pull away from you, threatening not to sink back into harmony, and then whoosh, finally does. Which is what I felt like my life had done.

10. Miike Snow — “Animal” (Sweden)

It was between this and Edward Sharpe’s “Home,” but really, this is the song I’ll request at the New Year’s party, the upbeat anthem that signals hey — 2010 is going to be great. “There was a time when my world was filled with darkness, darkness / And I stopped dreaming now I’m supposed to fill it up with something, something…Are you free or are you tied up?” Get free! Dance a little!