NPR: All Songs Considered: Best Songs 2005 (So Far)

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Best Songs 2005 (so far)

Halfway through the year and the songs are strong. Newer artists like Bright Eyes and Flotation Toy Warning are pushing the boundaries of new-folk or acoustic art rock, while veterans like Bruce Springsteen return to their roots. Before the summer slips by and fall accelerates into winter, we offer this show as a chance to catch up on the great sounds of 2005 (so far).

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This song originally appeared in our preview of 2005 releases. It's from the album Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, one of two new CDs from Nebraska's experimental folk artists. Bright Eyes later debuted as All Songs Considered's first performer in this year's new live concert series.

Bright Eyes

CD: Digital Ash in a Digital Urn
Song: "Easy/Lucky/Free"
Label: Saddle Creek

Listen to "Easy/Lucky/Free"

Listen to Bright Eyes live in concert from the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C.

Also from the 2005 music preview, this is the follow up to M. Ward's beautifully haunting 2004 release Transfiguration of Vincent.

M. Ward

CD: Transistor Radio
Song: "Sweethearts on Parade"
Label: Merge

Listen to "Sweethearts"

Last year's full-length release, Our Endless Numbered Days made Iron and Wine's Sam Beam a darling of the new-folk movement. This EP picks up where that album left off, with six delicate, dark woods songs. It originally appeared on All Songs Considered Episode 76.

Iron and Wine

CD: Woman King
Song: "Freedom Hangs Like Heaven"
Label: Sub Pop

Listen to "Freedom Hangs Like Heaven"

The Decemberists are a five-piece Portland band that crafts whimsical story songs steeped in history. The band's name comes from the Decembrists Russian revolutionaries who led an unsuccessful uprising against the czar in 1825. This was originally featured on Episode 78.

The Decemberists

CD: Picaresque
Song: "The Infanta"
Label: Kill Rock Stars

Listen to "The Infanta"

Listen to the Decemberists live in concert.

Bruce Springsteen released this beautifully-crafted collection of mostly acoustic songs in April. Recorded without the E Street Band, Springsteen returns to a sound reminiscent of his earliest work.

Bruce Springsteen

CD: Devils and Dust
Song: "Maria's Bed"
Label: Columbia

Listen to "Maria's Bed"

Hear a two-part interview with Bruce Springsteen from NPR's Morning Edition

Grey DeLisle was the voice of Daphne in a direct-to-dvd cartoon movie of Scooby Doo. She's also a singer with a dark and distant voice on this inventive cover of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." It originally appeared on All Songs Considered Episode 84.

Grey DeLisle

CD: Iron Flowers
Song: "Bohemian Rhapsody"
Label: Sugar Hill

Listen to "Bohemian Rhapsody"

Spoon first formed in Austin, Texas in 1994. On their fifth and arguably best CD, the band takes a creative leap with an artfully crafted collection of ambitious pop. This also first appeared on Episode 84.

Spoon

CD: Gimme Fiction
Song: "I Turn My Camera On"
Label: Merge

Listen to "I Turn My Camera On"

Before becoming a favorite among art pop fans, Sufjan Stevens was first featured on All Songs Considered's Open Mic. This CD is part of an ambitious series of albums Stevens is composing on all 50 U.S. states.

Sufjan Stevens

CD: Illinois
Song: "John Wayne Gacy Jr."
Label: Asthmatic Kitty

Listen to "John Wayne Gacy Jr."

Listen to and download a song Sufjan Stevens wrote and recorded exclusively for NPR as part of an All Things Considered feature looking at the way he writes about places he's never visited.

The music is as mysterious as the group's history. The band, which clearly likes a good tale, claims frontman Donald Drusky was a former test pilot who met drummer Don LeCannes at the unveiling of his latest invention: some sort of instrument called a stair horn. LeCannes introduced Dusky to a rival inventor, Magnesi Rich, who was "translating Chinese wind shapes" with Benedict Maidsaver and Victoria Vest. The five met for dinner and, as the story goes, "discovered a common interest in astrophonics" and decided to form a band!

Flotation Toy Warning

CD: Bluffer's Guide to the Flight Deck
Song: "Fire Engine on Fire Pt. 1"
Label: Misra

Listen to "Fire Engine on Fire Pt. 1"

Arcade Fire wrote this new single specifically for the HBO TV show "Six Feet Under." It appears on this new collection along with several other new songs written for the show by artists like Jem and Interpol.

Arcade Fire

CD: Everything Ends: Music from the HBO Original Series Six Feet Under Vol. 2
Song: "Cold Wind"
Label: Astralwerks

Listen to "Cold Wind"

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