It was a great year for music, plain and simple. From return-to-form albums by Björk, Jay-Z, Nine Inch Nails, and the Wu-Tang Clan to the steady indie-rock consistency of Ted Leo, Rilo Kiley, and Spoon, 2007 offered a wealth of quality music from the usual suspects. R. Kelly and Mary J. Blige supplied their fans with more radio-friendly R&B drama. Even some bygone British faces — Blur’s Damon Albarn with his new band the Good, the Bad and the Queen, and former Pulp front man Jarvis Cocker with his solo album — reappeared with durable new projects. Somebody named Britney Spears released a fun new album. And not only did pop-smart Kanye West beat 50 Cent for opening-week sales, he put himself in position to collect the Album of the Year Grammy he’s always wanted.

Nevertheless, it was a class of newer faces that defined the year, from the updated R&B traditionalism of Amy Winehouse, the updated country traditionalism of Miranda Lambert, and the updated Joni Mitchell traditionalism of Feist, to the explosion of dance-floor music scoring crossover hits thanks to big, adored albums from Battles, Justice, LCD Soundsystem, and Daft Punk. The year’s most successful artists created indelible albums of dynamic music, bold ambitions, and just plain old good tunes you want to hear again and again.

1. Saul Williams — “The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust” (digital download of self-release)

Radiohead made all the headlines for its pay-what-you-want download release “In Rainbows” in October, but a few weeks later Saul Williams did the British rock outfit one better than simply lead the music industry toward the distribution model of the future. This album sounds like the future.

Mr. Williams — the New York-based spoken-word artist, writer, actor, and all-around fountain of intelligent consciousness — teamed up with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor to smelt the year’s most politically agitated and musically sophisticated release. A concept album about the titular black revolutionary, Mr. Williams’s rhymes are as peacock brilliant as always, only here he’s backed by Mr. Reznor’s dizzying production, which is as dense, bruising, and funky as early Bomb Squad explosions.

2. Talibam! — “Ordination of the Globetrotting Conscripts” (Azul Discografica)

As traditional indie rock continues its romance with electronics and dance music in an effort to thwart irrelevance (see: Battles, LCD Soundsystem), this Brooklyn trio of Matt Mottel, Kevin Shea, and Ed Bear wanders into far looser territory in search of rock’s explosive energy. On “Ordination of the Globetrotting Conscripts,” the trio mines the past 35 years of downtown New York improvisation more for its ugly beauty than brick-wall attitude, and marries it to an effusive energy that’s inviting rather than distancing. The result is a noisy ocean of sound that feels like a less sarcastic Sun City Girls — instrumental jazz-rock as playful and swirling as the Thinking Fellers Union tackling Miles Davis’s electric 1970s.

3. Brother Ali — “The Undisputed Truth” (Rhymesayers Entertainment)

The albino Muslim from Minneapolis, Minn., again proves it doesn’t take a major-label deal to deliver a major album. Like many contemporary underground hip-hop MCs, Brother Ali seeks inspiration in the warm production and lyrical dexterity of golden-age hip-hop from the late 1980s and early ’90s — but he’s not on a nostalgia kick. Producer Ant paints “The Undisputed Truth” in funky layers and soulful samples, but the beats remain as lithe and supple as hip-hop pop, creating head-bobbing pockets for Brother Ali to deliver his politically observant and narrative lyrics in his surreptitiously menacing bombast.

4. Oxbow — “The Narcotic Effect” (Hydra Head)

San Francisco quartet Oxbow stopped being a metal band at least a decade ago, and with “The Narcotic Effect” — the band’s sixth album in its 20-year career — the group maps the new frontier of heavy, melodic, and, above all, intense rock. Guitarist Niko Wenner has an ear for crafting riffs that begin in classic-rock boogie, pass through Birthday Party anarchy, and wind up in distressing, uncomfortable sonic territory — an uncanny room around which bassist Dan Adams and drummer Greg Davis erect thick walls. Inside, vocalist-author-cage-fighting enthusiast Eugene Robinson howls and bellows like a cornered predator. Lushly arranged, gorgeously played, and unpredictably volatile, “The Narcotic Effect” is one of the best documents of what is still the most intimidating live band in rock.

5. Kathy Diamond — “Miss Diamond to You” (Permanent Vacation)

Let North London’s Amy Winehouse get the Grammy nominations for her updating of classic 1960s girl pop with contemporary attitudes. Kathy Diamond, the now London-based singer from Sheffield, brings the real next generation of northern soul with her seductively plush “Miss Diamond to You.” Produced by Mu’s beat wizard, Maurice Fulton, “Miss Diamond” weds Massive Attack-style trip-hop to disco and the all-night fluidity of house music. Over these intoxicating rhythms, Ms. Diamond’s velvety voice makes anytime feel like the best hour to be in the club. The result is the best late-night bedroom album since Tricky’s “Maxinquaye.”

6. UGK — “Underground Kingz” (Jive)

The final pairing of Houston hip-hop heroes Bernard “Bun B” Freeman and Chad “Pimp C” Butler following the latter’s untimely death earlier this month, “Underground Kingz” finds the duo operating at the top of their Southern hip-hop game throughout this double album’s 29 songs. Just the seventh album in this duo’s nearly 20-year career — and its first to debut at No.1 on the Billboard charts — “Kingz” finds the Houston legends collaborating with hip-hop heavyweights throughout, from MCs Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, and Outkast to producers Lil Jon, Swizz Beatz, and Marley Marl. But the album’s best moments come when Butler’s almost countrified production tempers the songs with folksy melancholy, a mood Mr. Freeman complements with his agile gravitas.

7. Pig and Dan — “Imagine” (Cocoon)

Axel Willner — better known as the Field — pushed microhouse into mainstream and indie-pop play lists this year with his bubbling, luxuriant “From Here We Go Sublime,” but Pig and Dan — the veteran Spanish producers Igor Tchkotoua and Dan Duncan — made the album that takes minimal techno into new territory. “Imagine” feels too nostalgic at first — the speaker clicks and pops recall the early years of Mille Plateaux and textural glitch techno — but the effects are soon swallowed by surges of drum patterns and darting bass lines. “Imagine” is 2007’s gorgeous microhouse album that doesn’t forsake visceral rhythmic complexity for atmospheric, melodic prettiness.

8. Imani Coppola — “The Black and White Album” (Ipecac)

In a more just universe, Keyshia Cole’s “Just Like You” would be a commercial and critical blockbuster on par with Mariah Carey’s “The Emancipation of Mimi” and Imani Coppola would be as widely adored and respected as Beck and Björk. The New York singer-songwriter returned after a three-year absence with this ambitious, genre-hopping album full of intelligent and soulful pop. Ms. Coppola riddles “Black and White” with just as many pop hooks as she does clever lyrics, soulful sass, and radically diverse styles. It’s a refreshingly ambitious album, doubly so for the experimentation that turns out such accessible, smart pop songs.

9. M.I.A. — “Kala” (Interscope)

Sri Lankan by way of London, singer-songwriter Maya Arulpragasam follows up the rhythm-happy frenzy of her 2005 debut, “Arular,” with an even more accomplished and beat-happy slab of electro-pop goodness in “Kala.” Ms. Arulpragasam once again collaborated with some agile, innovative producers — specifically the Brtiain-based Switch and Baltimore-based Blaq Starr — and turned out an instantly upbeat and riveting dose of genre-defying funk. From the lead-off rumble “Bamboo Banger” through the stomping “Boyz,” “Kala” rushes along like a dance party featuring DJs flown in from the funkiest underground clubs around the world.

10. Swod — “Sekunden” (City Center Offices)

Stars of the Lid’s “And the Refinement of the Decline” is the woozily atmospheric 2007 album that has critics falling under its spell, but Swod’s “Sekunden” is, quite frankly, the more beautiful and haunting release. Just the second collaboration between Oliver Doerell (guitar, bass, and electronics) and Stephan Wöhrmann (piano, drums), “Sekunden” is a gentle, low-key immersion into sanguine moods, gossamer production, and some of the most dreamily bittersweet melodies to be found these days. Enigmatic, mysterious, and yet somehow as comforting as a freshly made hot cocoa with cream, “Sekunden” bests even Brian Eno at his most bucolically ethereal.