really don't have a particular order or list but I know that I heavily enjoyed these this year:

Foster The People - Torches
M83 - Hurry Up We're Dreaming
Bon Iver - Bon Iver
August Burns Red - Leveler
Florence + The Machine - Ceremonials
The Script - Science & Faith
Yellowcard - When You're Through Thinking, Say Yes
Oh Sleeper - Children of Fire
Times of Grace - The Hymn Of A Broken Man
Unearth - Darkness In The Light
Drake - Take Care

. The Weeknd -House of Balloons/Thursday/ Echoes of Silence (I cheated and put them togeth

This shit right here! The Weeknd is my favorite new discovery of 2011.

My reaction to The Weeknd is always "Why should I listen to this when I can just put on an album from The-Dream?"

This is the problem with rap there's too many hanger ons. Jay-z post 2007 is trash. Eminem has sucked for a very long time as well. Yet people continue to support them because of their names.

Eminem is as good as he's ever been right now on a technical level. He just doesn't have anything to say anymore.

Quit listening to him after 2005 when he released that dog shit album. If this were the NFL dude would be averaging 2.7 a carry now.

Listen to the new Bad Meets Evil album. Em brings it on some technical MC shit.

Yeah. I dig. And I don't necessarily agree with Reaper's take that it's a rehash of The Dream. I do think that HoB was much more interesting and fresh than anything else he's put out since, though.

Edit: I should add that I'm completely prejudiced right now because I'm fascinated by the current conflux of indie and hiphop/R&B, which the Weeknd represents very well. The Dream seems to draw much more on traditional R&B (and that's not a bad thing at all). He's all around better than Abel from a larger perspective, but I'm pretty caught up in the movement that Abel is a part of at the moment.

For all the "fresh" music listeners... Here is a pretty good song from Hi-Rez... He's unsigned I think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR94P...40D&lf=mh_lolz

Really looking forward to the 2012 version!

Out of curiosity, what would your order be now?

On the 2008 list? That's a good question. Give me some time to think about it.