We've been linking to some year-end best-of lists these past few weeks, and after some deliberation, we decided to get in on the fun and do some of our own. Note that these aren't definitive rankings—there are no "number ones"—and there are no doubt a lot of great things that we neglected to include, either because we forgot or because we missed them or maybe because we just didn't think they made the cut. But lists are fun, and hopefully these will help you relive some of your favorite moments of 2015 and introduce you to some new artists who are well worth checking out. So on that note, happy holidays, and here's to another great year in 2016.

FIVE GREAT ALBUMS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

Salad Boys – Metalmania

Salad Boys hail from New Zealand, the land of finely perfected jangle pop, and Salad Boys carry that torch admirably on their debut album. Opener “Here’s No Use” recalls the best of Teenage Fanclub and other early '90s power pop, while “No Taste Bomber” builds to an anthemic rhythmic crescendo straight out of the Feelies’ The Good Earth. Available via Trouble in Mind.

Shopping – Why Choose

I always forget there was a lighter side to post-punk. Bands like Joy Division and Wire have come to swallow up popular conception of the genre, recasting it in discord and gloom. But Shopping takes after bands like Gang of Four and the Slits, bringing danceable grooves to consumerist critiques, and the band’s impeccably timed male-female vocal interplay pushes everything to another level. Available via FatCat.

DKMD – Sacrificio EP

Marie Davidson had a banner year, with a string of successful SXSW shows leading up to the release of her second album, Un Autre Voyage,in April. While that album is great in its own right, her lesser known DKMD project put out this EP in January. A collaboration with David Kristian, DKMD’s Sacrificio is a prime example of “giallo disco,” Italian horror soundtrack-inspired electronica. It’s a little gimmicky, yes, but this is killer dance music—no pun intended. Digital download available via Giallo Disco.

XETAS – The Redeemer

XETAS turn heads with their bursting-at-the-seams live show, and their particular brand of angsty, melodic, early-90s-inspired punk was a breath of fresh air when they emerged on the Austin scene in 2014. Building on the promise of their debut 7", The Redeemer is both sing-alongable and head-bangable, displaying both intelligible vocals and intelligent lyrics with earnest ferocity. Available via 12XU.

Richard Papiercuts – IF

Richard Papiercuts was born of the ashes of New York noise outfit The Chinese Restaurants, but IF is a decidedly un-noisy affair—weird, yes, but remarkably accessible. Think Ariel Pink reinventing Roxy Music. Available via Ever/Never Records.

—Sean Redmond

FIVE GREAT SMALL-PRESS TITLES BY WOMEN

The Story of My Teeth, by Valeria Luiselli (Coffee House Press)

The Story of My Teeth is a strange novel. Originally commissioned by an art gallery, and sponsored by Jumex Juice Corporation in Mexico City, it is a collaborative work of literature and photography. As Luiselli wrote the novel, pages were read aloud daily to the factory workers at Jumex. Their responses and reactions were then worked into the novel. The story follows Gustavo “Highway” Sanchez Sanchez, master auctioneer, and his teeth. The novel is smart, replete with artistic/philosophical/literary references, but it is somehow never pretentious.

Citizen, by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf Press)

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen is a truly groundbreaking work. It beautifully blurs the line between poetry and essay, devising a storytelling form that lends power to its content. Citizen details mounting racial tensions in “post-racial” America, ranging from what appear as well-meaning comments (that imply underlying racist socialization) to the clear and overt racial aggressions that happen daily in the United States. The writing is sharp, intelligent, and will emotionally punch you in the stomach. This is a very important book.

All Our Happy Days Are Stupid,by Shelia Heti (McSweeney’s)

In 2001, a feminist theater company commissioned Shelia Heti’s All Our Happy Days Are Stupid. The play never came to fruition, they never staged it, and Heti spent subsequent years attempting to rework and improve it, eventually convincing herself of her own failure. She even wrote a novel about it. It’s called How Should A Person Be?, and it received a number of accolades upon release, including a New York Times Notable Book of the Year award. Now, years later, we can fully experience the play that we could merely glimpse from the pages of that novel.

The Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector (New Directions Press)

We should all gather together to thank New Directions for their dedication to making Clarice Lispector a household name. They recently republished five of her novels, then released this comprehensive collection of her short stories, published for the first time in English, earlier this year. The stories follow Lispector through the entirety of her life, until her death in 1977 at the age of 56. As such, there is a near constant element of transformation and reinvention. Her stories are smart and very funny, with a pervasive sense of instability and a tendency toward the unexpected.

The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson (Graywolf Press)

Maggie Nelson has done it again. The author of Bluets, The Art of Cruelty, The Red Parts, and more, Nelson has a signature style of beautifully constructed language that is informed, emotionally intentional, and radically minded. In The Argonauts, she explores relationships between gender, identity, sexuality, desire, queer family making, and mothering. It follows her relationship with artist Harry Dodge, from falling in love, through pregnancy, to the daily joys and challenges of building a family. It is critical of “normative” expectations of familial relationships and child rearing, while deeply personal, sensitive, and moving.

—Megan Lambert

FIVE GREAT MUSIC VIDEOS

Artist: Michael Vidal Song: Dreams (Come Back to Me) Directed by: Clare Kelly

“I wanted to lose myself in your dream / but everything I lose / someday comes back to me,” Vidal intones earnestly over romantic, looping guitar in this beautiful, pared-down video. Filmed in an unpretentious rooftop garden replete with California sunlight, Vidal appears, unassuming in black, between two tethered dancers and the Los Angeles backdrop. Sound, movement, and reflective mirror shots peak in synchrony near the three-minute mark, a perfect fit.

Artist: Cool Memories Song: Red Dress Directed by: Molly Hewitt

A strange, dynamic video flushed with visual detail. Cool Memories appear in hypnagogic close-ups, playing suspended instruments in a saturated red room as singer Bret Koontz resounds, “My red dress, so surreal / It makes you laugh, does it make you feel?” Shots of dancers are interspersed, stark carmine and dreamlike under Chicago’s drab cloud cover, their serene choreography synced to each snare hit. The color provides a powerful visual center, threading a ribbon through the images and song, both feeling distant, but sanguine.

Artist: Earring Song: Black Chalk Directed by: Jenna Caravello

In a sublime synergy of animation and drone, an Escher-esque living space is traversed to the expectant, buzzing cycle of Earring’s post-punk guitars. Around one corner, a suspended eyeball roves, then sinks into the floor. Around another, an amorphous protozoan emerges, swims, sinks into the wall. Caravello’s choice to depict safe, domestic images in an ever-permutating reality gives the piece a strong hallucinatory quality, conjuring mystery within the familiar.

Artist: Lushes Song: Circus Director: OMG Everywhere New York

Creepy, passive child clowns appear in nightmarish, half-lit vignettes, evoking eerie early 90s era video and suiting Lushes’s anxious post-rock. Glazed over figures writhe with the instrumental dissonance before it gives way to singer James Ardery’s blank face and deadpan vocal delivery, “We’re in the circus / and I just want you to know / that it’s a joke.” An apt metaphor for an album on the horror and indignity of the service industry.

Artist: J Fernandez Song: Between the Channels Directed by: Jerzy Rose

Disparate scenes are bound by Rose’s slow pan and heavy focus on faces in this amalgam of emotive moments. Subjects weep openly: an artist over her canvas, a chef cutting hair in her kitchen, a man in the middle of a party. Onlookers decorate each scene, nonplussed, pensive, indifferent amidst the string interludes and Fernandez singing, “Communication is a waste of time / between the channels / try to find an answer.” A hazy, mesmeric video befitting a similarly genre-evading track. (Full disclosure: I make a cameo in this video.)

—Sarah Jane Quillin

FIVE GREAT AUSTIN ART SHOWS

Mi{ne}mesis Rose: Dea ex Machina, at ATM Gallery

I confess: I have no idea what the “story” behind this show was. There was hedonism, Nazi weaponry, German philosophy, and a burnt couch, surrounded by mutated yin-yangs and other futuristic symbols. At the center of it all, a self-referential video featuring the artists and a melting rose drew the audience into this strange universe and served as a reminder of how much fun must have gone into putting it all together. The show was created by Clayton Smith Westmeier and featured work by Berkeley Beauchot, Jonny Negron, and many others.

labile affect, at Co-Lab Projects

This exhibit was put together by four women—Natalie Bradford, Whitney Hill, Tsz Kam, and Kate Wilson—who set about exploring, expanding, and pushing against the contours of femininity. Giant nests and little pink plush toys were contrasted by a wall of crowding mice, which added a strange, somewhat creepy edge to the cuteness. The highlight of the exhibit was the “ladies market,” a stall inspired by such markets found in many cities across Asia.

Words,at pump project

Kevin McNamee-Tweed had a great year, with the release of two books—the appropriately titled Books and Words—and two accompanying art shows. Words was my favorite of the two, as McNamee-Tweed’s brilliance is most evident when looking at how he is able to wring so much humor and insight out of slight misspellings and well-placed spaces: an extra “e” turns “ur in love” into “ur ine love”; an extra “m” creates the phrase “Timming is everything.” Language is rarely this much fun.

Life Machine, at Co-Lab Projects

Angelbert Metoyer has been doing his thing for quite a while now, but the Houston-based artist spends less time around these parts than he used to, so it was nice to see his work here in Austin at not just one but two exhibits—at the Contemporary, as part of the group show Strange Pilgrims, and in this show at Co-Lab Projects. Metoyer’s work feels like it’s beamed to us from another dimension—relics of his creole ancestry intermingle with collages and video and snippets of what may or may not be a completely made-up language. Metoyer has a wide range of “signifiers,” as he refers to them—colors and symbols and systems whose meaning we can only guess at through our limited means of interpretation. But therein lies the fun: the mystery is endlessly enchanting.

Natural Future Museum, at MASS Gallery

Michelle Devereux and Christa Palazzolo put together this exhibit, which was a humorous send-up of retro-futurism—future-retroism, you could call it. The exhibit featured a man dressed as a caveman, fossilized cell phones, a painting of Grace Jones set in front of a prehistoric backdrop, and a geodesic dome complete with blacklit fingerpainting and some good old-fashioned peace-pipe-smoking—just like in the good old days. Or the good old-new days. Or whatever.

—Sean Redmond

FIVE GREAT LITERARY FEUDS (AND THEIR WINNERS)

Rebecca Solnit vs. Esquire

Fed up with Esquire’s years-old but still ubiquitous “80 Best Books Every Man Should Read” list, writer Rebecca Solnit penned an essay on books that no woman should read. Not coincidentally, there’s some overlap. Solnit included works by Ayn Rand, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Norman Mailer. But the essay’s real meat lies in Solnit’s subtle sarcasm, well-placed barbs, and cogent, clever arguments.

Winner: Rebecca Solnit

Cornel West vs. Ta-Nehisi Coates

When Toni Morrison called Ta-Nehisi Coates our generation’s James Baldwin, Cornel West saw an opportunity to make himself relevant for a few minutes again. So he did what any old man with a grudge would do: he elbowed his way into his friends’ Facebook feeds with a cranky political diatribe, calling Coates “a clever wordsmith… who avoids any critique of the Black president in power.” Five months after its publication, Coates’s Between the World and Me is still number four on the New York Times bestseller list.

Winner: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Jonathan Franzen vs. everyone

Jonathan Franzen vs. the National Audubon Society. Jonathan Franzen vs. feminists. Jonathan Franzen vs. a federal prison inmate. Jonathan Franzen vs. modern life. Jonathan Franzen vs. sexual arousal. Jonathan Franzen vs. basic human decency. Jonathan Franzen vs. Jonathan Franzen.

Winner: David Foster Wallace

Atticus Finch vs. your childhood

The publication of Harper Lee’s second novel was marred by controversy from its announcement. While we all wondered whether Lee was of sound mind and body, and whether Go Set a Watchman was a true sequel or just an abandoned first draft, no one suspected that American literature’s most unimpeachable hero would be the one to retroactively ruin To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus’s racism in Watchman shocked critics and readers alike, sparking fears that Lee’s legacy would be permanently altered. Meanwhile, hipsters who wanted to look smart by naming their children after a literary character regretted their life choices.

Winners: The scholars who had been calling Atticus racist for years

204 writers vs. PEN America

PEN America’s decision to honor the murdered staffers of France’s Charlie Hebdo with the Freedom of Expression Courage Award pitted writer against writer and friend against friend in the year’s most self-righteous literary battle. Two weeks before PEN’s annual gala, six hosts—Peter Carey, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, and Taiye Selasi—withdrew in protest, decrying the satirical magazine’s persecution of France’s already marginalized Muslim population. Salman Rushdie stoked the flames and squandered goodwill by calling Carey, et al., “just six pussies.” But soon, more than 200 writers, including Lorrie Moore, Junot Diaz, and everyone’s eccentric auntie Joyce Carol Oates had signed a letter criticizing PEN’s decision. Of course, after the May 5 gala, PEN and its members once again retreated to the recesses of our nation’s collective consciousness, and liberal arts undergrads everywhere mourned the loss of their opportunity to spout uninformed, fervent opinions on free speech at brunch.

Winners: The gala’s replacement hosts

—Alyssa G. Ramirez

FIVE GREAT HIP-HOP SONGS TO DRIVE AROUND TO

“Grief” by Earl Sweatshirt

At 2:28, the beat drops with a hi-hat addition at “snakes slidin’ in the street” and the rest of the track rolls out in a way that makes your body involuntarily move in a slow wave. With lines like “lately I’ve been panicking a lot” and “thinking ’bout my grandmama, find a bottle, I’ma wallow when I lie in that,” it’s clear that Earl is in a dark place, as he is on this whole album. Amazing song for driving with your seat leaned back.

“Norf Norf” by Vince Staples

This track opens with an ominous sound, almost like a slow-motion siren, and it quickly drops into an extremely dance-y “Bitch you thirsty, please grab a Sprite.” The refrain “I ain’t ever ran from nothin’ but the police” is extremely catchy, and it always plays in a slow and calm parenthetical before tripping back into the chaotic dance beat that permeates the rest of the track. Every time I listen to this in the car I find myself slowly wriggling my back down into the cushion of the seat. Great for waking yourself up on the drive to work.

“Lift Me Up” by Vince Staples

I had to include another track from this album because it is so insanely good. The beginning beat drips with anticipation, like the track that plays before a film at the movie theaters, but it sounds nothing at all like that. Then the following line drops bluntly and heavily: “I’m just a n*gga, until I fill my pockets, and then I’m Mr. N*gga, they follow me while shoppin’.” This song has an amazing dance-heavy beat just like “Norf Norf,” but the lyrics are a potent exploration of racism and class. Another great line from this track: “I need to fight the power, but I need that new Ferrari.” Perfect for listening to full-blast with the windows down.

“Know Yourself” by Drake

The best part is when Drake yells “I was runnin’ through the six with my woes!” and breaks back into the hook— “you know how that shit go, you know how that shit go” —after a short break of unique, semi-creepy, music-box-like instrumentals. The verses and the hook are ridiculously catchy and strong, though the conversational recordings in the beginning and the end are a bit off-putting. Good to listen to in residential neighborhoods at night.

“Snug Again” by Run the Jewels

Okay, I’m cheating. Run the Jewels released Meow the Jewels this year, but it is a cat-filled version of their album from October 2014, Run the Jewels II. “Love Again,” the non-feline track from Run the Jewels II, is my favorite on that album, but I had to settle with the cat version for this list. The cat noises are distracting and honestly pretty annoying, but if you pretend that’s not happening, you’ve got the nastiest track of the past year and two months. It’s the best track to listen to when you’re on your way home at night. But beware: you will probably end up circling the block over and over with it on repeat.

—Shy Watson

2015: Our Top Fives