2. Teen Dream / Beach House

Beach House's glimmering pop is best exemplified by "Norway," the first single from the band's magnificent third album, Teen Dream. The Baltimore duo of Victoria LeGrand and Alex Scally replace some of the dreamy and drawn-out atmosphere found on 2008's Devotion with a greater sense of light-filled urgency. Stunning stuff.

Teen Dream is a shimmering masterpiece of mood and melody. Gorgeous and beguiling, the hazy album is the sonic equivalent of waves breaking on a sun-dappled morning beach, of lovers holding hands on a lidless night. The ooohs and aaahs are shrouds of misty texture, and the deliberate beats beam from an intrusive moon. At times gentle, the music, for all of its organ-droned, ethereal loveliness, still has its moments of self-assured thrust, and it is ultimately carried by LeGrand's loveblown vocal delivery. The stories of youth and romance, taken aloft by the music's rich fantasy, are grounded in the real world by LeGrand's earthy, lived-in voice.

"Zebra" propels forward on the back of Scally's rippling guitars and crests in a spray of color and chorus: "Anyway you run, you run before us / black and white horse / arching before us." "Silver Soul" yearns for something other than heartbreak, while "Lover of Mine" and "10 Mile Stereo" move with magnetic beats and LeGrand's near-mystical incantations. Musically, the album appears suspended, mid-air, among gossamer threads of longing, heartache, and passion; a web of timeless beauty.

The D Man possesses a fierce attraction to this record, and the music's durability, listen after listen, has been nothing short of intoxicating. Like some powerful elixir, The D Man simply cannot get enough of the album's overarching vibe. Teen Dream is the album Beach House was destined to make. A classic.