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Over the past decade, the definitions of "alternative" and "indie" have become increasingly subjective. An independent artist can quickly attract a mainstream following thanks to instant blog/social-networking stardom, and a major-label luminary can venture into decidedly "indie" sounds (which in itself really has no concrete meaning). Alternative and indie can refer to artists who delve into rock, pop, electronic, world, jazz, classical -- sometimes all at once. It's a genre that refuses to be a genre. Its essence is to reject classification and celebrate eccentricity, abstractness and autonomy.

So this is by no means a definitive list; it's simply an acknowledgment of artists that have managed to continually stand out, whether they're Brits, Canadians, Brooklynites or a solo dude holed up in a Midwestern cabin. Though many of the artists represented here belong to some sort of revival -- post-punk, synth-pop, classic rock, garage-rock, shoegazer, folk -- each has imprinted their genre with a distinctly modern touch that will forever be recognized as quintessential '00s, a decade when innovation was steered not by looking to the future but by honoring the past.

Be sure to listen to all the artists mentioned here, anywhere and anytime in high-def audio, with your Rhapsody subscription. Not a member? Click here for a free trial and get on board with the ultimate music experience.

With the release of Paramore's new album, Twilight's Kristen Stewart rocking her best Joan Jett for an upcoming bio-pic and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O leading an all-star cast of indie rockers on the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack, it's really not a bad time to be a chick in a rock band. But of course, all chicks fronting rock bands face the age-old question at some point: To go solo or not to go solo? It's a question Paramore's Hayley Williams had to quash when rumors swirled this summer over a possible solo move when she contributed a track to the Jennifer's Body soundtrack. She's stayed adamant that Paramore is going nowhere, but this got us thinking -- as tempting as it is to reach for the brass ring, is going solo always a good idea? We lined up a few examples Ms. Williams might want to consider for future reference. (And please to be remembering: if you dig Paramore, solo projects, Wild Things, or all of the above, then get on the jet with a Rhapsody subscription -- try it for free right here, right now.) 

As individuals, Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, The Nightwatchman) and Boots Riley (The Coup) have caused quite a commotion. Together, as Street Sweeper Social Club, they're a revolution unto themselves, mixing Riley's sociopolitical jibes, sardonic quips ("poverty has just gone platinum") and fist-pumping commands with Morello's hyper-twitchy, pitch-shifting guitar rallies. We've chronicled the duo's journey from Rage and the Coup to this latest collaboration with loads of revolution-ready riffs and rhymes, exclusive video interviews and the band's debut album. Raise your fist and enjoy.

LISTEN: Play the debut album from Street Sweeper Social Club.

RADIO: Get inspired through speech and song with Rhapsody's Revolution Radio

WATCH: See Tom Morello talk about his favorite album with Rhapsody's On the Record.

LOOK: See Boots Riley talk about his favorite album with Rhapsody's On the Record.

RAGE: Rock out to Rage Against the Machine's entire catalog. REBEL: Feel the rhythm with all of The Coup's revolutionary music.

It's been nearly three decades in Sonic Youth's saga, yet the band's art-rock blitz sounds as vital as ever on their 15th studio album, The Eternal. With DIY on the rise and a new wave of lo-fi making indie circles swoon, their influence is undeniable. The band itself has even ditched the major labels, releasing the record on Matador. The album reveals a wise maturity; while the cacophony of grinding, oddly tuned guitars remains a central element, there's a patient, poignant melodicism that lingers. Spacey drones and vocals slither around dead-on drums for a sound that remains as fresh as their name suggests.

Members Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Steve Shelley and Lee Ranaldo took some time out of their busy schedules promoting the album to give us individual playlists of their favorite songs. It's an interesting look inside the minds of each of them, from Moore's obscure punk picks and Gordon's My Bloody Valentine crush to Shelley's diverse oldie loves and Ranaldo's fondness for folk.

Play here, and follow along with their comments for each song, after the jump.

Rhapsody recently sat down with Tori Amos to discuss her new album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin. The conversation quickly turned into a candid reveal of the singer's family: the highs and lows of working with her husband (key quote: "You usually want to have an affair with your engineer anyway!") and parenting an 8-year-old daughter who finds embarrassing YouTube clips of her mother. Amos also discusses her discontent with the music biz and her evolution as an artist before the chat comes back full circle to the impetus behind the new album -- what she believes to be the greatest sin of all.

We also convinced Amos to participate in our burgeoning On the Record program, in which artists speak about records they love in exactly 45 seconds. Click the link to hear her pick and see plenty of others.

Parts 2 & 3 after the jump.

French band Phoenix are Rhapsody's Ones to Watch artist for the month of May. With their brisk, breezy and oh-so-chic electro-pop, they've grabbed not only our attention, but also the producers of SNL, where they caught more than a few American eyes a few weeks back. The thing is, though, the Parisian quartet have been perfecting their sound since the release of debut album, United, in 2000. Their new album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, is one of their best and most cohesive to date, and one of the reasons we were so pumped to chat with guitarist Lauren "Branco" Brancowitz. The affable Frenchman gave us his thoughts on Mozart, SNL, the Smiths, playing with those two dudes from a little group called Daft Punk, the exoticism of American food and the "bad bands" Phoenix have influenced.

Rhapsody: Let's talk about your new album -- the writing process, inspiration, etc.
(Laurent) Brancowitz: The writing process is a very complicated one. There’s no leader in Phoenix. What we do is stay in the same room forever and after a certain amount of time, something good comes out of it. After a lot of frustration, we have a little moment of grace when the song is finished. So, basically we are just waiting for this moment to happen. This time we did it in Paris and it took like 18 months. So a long time, a lot of pain and small moments of intense pleasure.

Rhapsody: Why did you guys choose to name the album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix?
Brancowitz: Actually, we were looking for something that was unforgettable and this name was a gift from above and we just accepted the gift. It is very beautiful but very stupid at the same time. We like the fact that it has a lot of power and that it would create a shock for everyone, including our fans. We didn’t want to play it safe and take a very cool elegant name. We wanted something that would challenge people. I love this title.

Rhapsody: I like it too. Are you guys fans of Mozart at all?
Brancowitz: Yeah we love Mozart, but it’s really not about Mozart, it’s about taking the biggest cultural icon ever. It’s like painting a mustache over a beautiful painting. It’s like a pop act of vandalism.

In preparation for Rhapsody's big premiere of one of 2009's most anticipated releases, I studied up on Green Day more than I ever crammed for any test, final or fate-deciding exam. I ran through their bio, pored over their every move and had their entire catalog on repeat for about a month straight. We were honored to premiere the Bay Area punks' new album, 21st Century Breakdown, but through all the celebratory hoo-ha, I -- a big fan of the trio myself -- couldn't help wondering why anyone should still care about Green Day.

I was first struck with the Green Day bug at age 13 when I saw the video for "Basket Case" on MTV and quickly traded in my Ace of Base CD (yeah, I totally saw "the sign") for Dookie. It was a monumental album for my suburban teenage self and it subsequently led me to bands like the Clash, the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. But I admit I lost some of my lust for the trio after Dookie -- besides a few singles here and there, the band never quite caught my attention again in the same way. Even my feelings toward American Idiot's big-boned conceptual rock didn't initially measure up to my first foray into Green Day's early material.

But going back through their catalog, I started to appreciate their significance more and more. I realized not just why I clutched Dookie so close to my heart in 1994, but why I still do: Green Day spin modern life into tunes that articulate the thoughts and frustrations piling up in the heads of American adolescents, when they "feel locked up in a world that's been planned out for them," when they "sit around watching the phone, and no one's calling," when they're simply "burned out and growing bored." Of course, it's no secret that this was Green Day's appeal 15 years ago. What's amazing is that, two decades later, they're as good at it as they've ever been.

Holy smokes! Are we still doing this contest thing in conjunction with our super awesome premiere of Green Day's (very well received) new album 21st Century Breakdown? It appears so. And since anything worth doing is worth doing Bigger and Better than you did it last time, we decided to make today's contest an entire quiz!

The Prize: A Logitech Squeezebox Boom
The Task: Answer the questions in the following quiz and Tweet them to us (example: "1-A, 2-B, 3-C..." etc.). The first Tweeter to send us all the right answers wins! Go!

1.) A song cycle-as-panorama depicting the American landscape during the Bush administration's reign, Green Day's American Idiot mainly told its story through the eyes of a single character, who went by many names. Which of these is actually one of those names:

A. Krazy Karl the Kaiser of Kmart
B. The Son of Rage and Love
C. Steve, the Prozac-Addled Gas Station Attendant with Turrets
D. Ashton Kutcher

2.) Sorry, girls: Billie Joe is married. But he still knows from heartbreak. A former girlfriend inspired several songs on 1994's Dookie; in one he asks if she is feeling like what?

A. A cross-eyed punk that's in a funk
B. An American idiot
C. A burned-out broad in love with a fraud
D. A social tool without a use

Not done yet ...

HEAR IT FIRST: Listen to Rhapsody's premiere of 21st Century Breakdown.

EXPLORE: Dig deeper than Dookie with our Green Day album Guide.

GET SCHOOLED: The Jam and other punk icons rage on in the Green Day influences playlist.

PLAY: Hear the band's best on our Have a Happy Green Day playlist.

ROCK THE RADIO: Crank up Punk radio. You'll yearn for liberty spikes in no time.

WATCH: Check out Green Day's awesome Rhapsody commercial.

Green Day 101: Class is in session. We've got a good way to wean you off the boys just for a second ... because a true Green Day fan needs to know the band's origins. What sort of tunes give Billie Joe the fuzzies inside? What does Mike crank up to get him pumped up? What inspires Tre to rip up the skins day in and day out? It's been said that when Billie Joe first heard the Sex Pistols, that was it ... he had found his calling. Green Day have also found inspiration in the Clash, Husker Du, Operation Ivy, not to mention classic rock kings like the Who and Queen (major influences on 21st Century Breakdown). Get inside their heads a bit with our Green Day influence sampler and dive into our radio station dedicated to the mayhem, the inebriation, the vexation, the anarchy, the beauty that is PUNK.

PLAY RHAPSODY'S PUNK STATION

If you haven't yet noticed, we are pretty pumped for our May 8 premiere of Green Day's upcoming new album, 21st Century Breakdown. We nearly had our own breakdown when we found out that today is officially Greenery Day in Japan. Coincidence? Perhaps, it was reason enough to put together this list of some of the Berkeley boys' best, from 1991's 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours to new single "Know Your Enemy." Enjoy.

From left to right: Joshua Winstead, Emily Haines, Joules Scott Key, James Shaw

After spending time apart focusing on other projects (Broken Social Scene, Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton), Metric unite for their first album in nearly four years with new release Fantasies. We got a chance to talk to guitarist Jimmy Shaw about the band's time apart, their writing process, how songs pass the "road test" and the Beatles vs. the Stones. Plus we got to pick his brain about such topics as fantasies, Fleetwood Mac moments, soaring pterodactyls and underground roller-coasters. Yeah, it's not all shop talk here.

 

Rhapsody: So, how do you guys celebrate a new release?
Shaw: Actually, last night it was a combination of champagne, a drink that we made up on tour called the Ginger-E (a mottled ginger, lime and tequila) and a chocolate fondue. I'm not going to lie to you.

 

Rhapsody: Did you practice some of the new songs at live shows to see how the audience would respond to them?
Shaw: It's funny the way we did it. We booked a tour and we did a lot of writing in 2007 ... By the end of that year we felt like we were really close to having a finished record. So, we booked a U.S. tour and played 30 days all across the U.S., and it was totally awesome. And we had a great time. By the end of it, we looked at each other and said, "I don't think this is good enough." We put it through the road test and most of it didn't pass … We virtually went back to the drawing board and started again. That's when Emily [Haines] went down to Buenos Aires and everybody sort of disbanded for a minute. I went into the studio and wrote some tracks. At that point it was more like knowing what you want to do by process of elimination. And that's how most of the songs on this record were actually written.

 

I admit it. My first big rock star crush was on Billie Joe Armstrong. So when I miraculously snatched a pair of Green Day tickets for a surprise show on Tuesday night, the butterflies, the sweating, the breaking out…all those mystifying feelings and weird hormonal reactions of being a 13-year-old girl came rushing back.

The trio (with entourage) decided, last minute, to throw a show at San Francisco's the Independent, and the venue quickly obliged, because, well, this is Green Day we're talking about. The Independent holds 374 people (said a random security guard at door), and those lucky enough to get inside got to witness their Bay Area heroes showcase songs from their upcoming May release, take requests from the audience ("F.O.D.," "J.A.R." (what's with the acronym songs, people?)), perform a fist-pumping rendition of "Shout" with a little bit of "Stand By Me" tossed in, and play songs off every album from 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours to American Idiot. And they sounded pretty damn good doing it. Catch my review of the show, including details about songs from their new album, after the jump.

Rhapsody Reviews: Text about music -- remember that?

The Fray
The Fray

The Denver boys have been living well off their debut How to Save a Life for over three years thanks to a multitude of TV exposure. They keep the trend going here, debuting their first single, "You Found Me," on Grey's Anatomy. It's a lucrative plan, and this second album is sure to succeed along the same soundtrack-appealing path. Over 10 songs, though, it all becomes a bit predictable: soft piano intro; pensive chorus that builds with the passion of a lovers' quarrel; and Isaac Slade's sensitive, sometimes strained croons (you just want to give the guy a hug!). "You Found Me" and "Say When" are guaranteed hits, but the little goodies here are in "Ungodly Hour," a track that could very well be confused with a Coldplay ballad (in fact, Slade stretches his vocals from a soothing softness to a casual falsetto in nearly the exact same way Chris Martin has trademarked); and in "We Build Then We Break," where the band finally busts out a little bit of rock 'n' roll 'tude. There's certainly an appeal to the Fray -- it's hard not to get wrapped up in their sentimentality without feeling just a little bit introspective. We'd just like to see a tad more oomph next time around.

From Pete Wentz to Jared Leto, Brandon Flowers and that weird alien-kid in Tokio Hotel, the male rocker is no stranger to the light touch of the soft pencil: eyeliner. Not since the heyday of Motley Crue and Twisted Sister have so many male eyelids been so questionably adorned in the stuff. Join us as we rate and berate these Gods of Guyliner.