The end of another year is upon us, and it’s time to say goodbye to 2008. It’s been a rough year for sure, but I think we need to take a moment to reflect. I want to highlight some of the good things that went down this year: I want to talk about awesome records. We’ve had a bunch of them, and a lot of them came out of nowhere.

Sometimes life just isn’t fair. Sometimes you find yourself wondering what could have been. Sometimes you hear a band like The King Left and you think, “Man, these dudes really should have been on the ‘Twilight’ soundtrack. They’d fit right in with all of the other angsty tween alt-rock on there. They could have been huge!”

The (International) Noise Conspiracy is a bar band, the kind of thing you’d try to ignore while making your way to the diner in a locals-only casino at two in the morning.

This band is terrible and they never would have made it this far if singer Dennis Lyxzen hadn’t been in one of the best hardcore bands ever: The Refused.

Tom Gabel bummed out a lot of people with Against Me!’s last record, “New Wave.” The shiny production, the arena-sized choruses and the major label money just took a lot out of the band’s anarchistic ethos. It’s true that things change as people get older and that even seasoned punks need to make a little cash, but it was hard for long-time fans not to scream “sell-out” as they took that one in.

I’ll be honest, when I first heard about Gang Gang Dance a few years back, I wrote them off as some hip NYC dance/ punk band a la CHK CHK CHK. I’d never actually heard them, but there was a rash of those bands at the time and their name seemed suspect enough so I passed. Holy crap, was I wrong.

Crystal Antlers released “EP” independently a few months back to massive applause from indie critics around the country. Now that the CD has been picked up by Touch and Go Records the proverbial poo is going to hit the fan for these guys.

Blitzen Trapper came out of nowhere to become the indie media’s new favorite Americana band with last year’s “Wild Mountain Nation.” This year, they give us “Furr,” a record that expands upon its predecessor’s meat and potatoes indie rock served with a heapin’ helpin’ of experimental psychedelic.

Shugo Tokumaru’s music is adorable. He produces the kind of pop gems that you just want to hug, and his newest album “Exit” would probably be one of the most irritating things this side of the Juno soundtrack if it weren’t so unpretentiously complex. While the arrangements alone do not result in a flawless victory, they do make for a charming and unpredictable record.

Chad VanGaalen is something of a magician. He is an artist who draws from the traditional methods of song craft and then transforms these methods into something mystical while effortlessly hiding the strings.