2007 is said and done, and Spin is prepared for 2008 with an eclectic, fresh list of 15 songs and a handful of videos by artists all prepared to wash away the mundane holiday season and push forward anew into the New Year.

In addition to their awesome 'fros, our esteemed jurors had something else in common this year: Both took cautious steps away from the outfits that made them famous.

If you've read enough comic books, the opening scene from The Umbrella Academy's first issue doesn't seem all that unusual: A tank-size pro wrestler wallops an interterrestrial squid with an atomic elbow, which then causes 43 women around the world to spontaneously give birth to superhero babies.

Even an ethnomusicologist in a hallucinogenic state couldn't invent a band like Dengue Fever. This Los Angeles–based sextet modernizes Cambodian psychedelic guitar pop from the '60s -- which was originally influenced by the rock and soul records broadcast over U.S. Armed Forces radio from Vietnam. Got that?

October 10, 2007, is a day that will live in infamy in the hearts of major-label executives. That was the day Radiohead, after more than a decade with Capitol Records, self-released their seventh album, In Rainbows, digitally, without a price tag.

One of Feist's backup singers, Mary, is crying. Another, Diane, holds an ice pack to her own bruised and swollen hand. At first glance, it would seem as though things backstage at Saturday Night Live's NBC studio have gone horribly wrong for tonight's musical guest, when in fact the opposite is true.