The Suburbs

Win Butler and Regine Chassagne built this around the Houston subdivisions Butler grew up in: the cul-de-sacs, the malls, the long boredom of a teenager waiting for life to start somewhere else. Across sixteen songs the band moves from that boredom to something close to grief, because the kids in these songs grow up and the suburbs they hated turn out to be the thing they miss. It won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2011, beating Eminem and Lady Gaga, and most of the room had no idea who they were.