Bears and Bullets: Bears and Bullets Top Ten Albums of the Decade

#8: Fever to Tell - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Fever to Tell is two versions of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs; first there's the utterly abrasive and gnarling sentiments of lead singer Karen O with songs like "Date With the Night" and "Tick" that sound like a cement-panel garage bursting with Iggy and The Stooges-era punk blues. And there's that blistering heart beneath the stage persona exterior with "Maps" and "Modern Romance." The majority of Fever to Tell is much of the former.

The band's 2006 album Show Your Bones and recent release It's Blitz! were all progressions of the Brooklyn trio's raw form on their 2003 debut, but neither can definitively rival it. Karen O's shake and grit that made her an indie girl icon is all here in its most pure and ecstatic form. "Y Control," Karen O's effigy on the Y-chromosome, implores a bigger picture. "I wish I could buy back the woman you stole," she bellows, almost making every man who listens feel worse in some odd, disconnected way.

Yet, it's "Maps" that endears this album more than anything else. For all the sneering punk in the albums first eight tracks, "Maps," was an instant grasp at glory. Easily one of the best songs of the last decade, it portrays a brilliant cascade of a group, who, at the time, were thought to nothing more but another name to throw on the emerging garage band pile in the early 2000's. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, mostly in part to "Maps," ensued and continue to prove themselves as one of the industry's finest artists, showcasing maturity, brilliance and progression with each new record.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Y Control