Top Tracks of the '00s: Maps

Song: "Maps"
Artist: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Album: Fever to Tell
Year: 2003

We love ringing in a new year by making best-of music lists.

To ring in the new decade, we're going to spend our Mondays in 2009 posting our favorite 40 tracks from the '00s, or zeros, or "ohs", or whatever we're going to end up calling the first ten years of the millennium.

Since we'll be posting one song a week, our list should be finished just about the time 2010 rolls around. If you love or hate our choices, or if there's a song you think should be on our list that isn't, please leave a comment: we'd love to get your feedback!

To start things off, we couldn't think of a better song than Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, off their 2003 album Fever to Tell. It's about as good as a heartache-y, indie garage band love song can get. More importantly, it has one of the coolest drum riffs in indie rock band history.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs performing "Maps" live

Most people have college classmates who've met with spectacular success. But when your college classmates have a hit single featured on Rock Band, it starts to feel a little weird.

Brian Chase, the man behind this track's infectious pulse-pounding beat, was my practice roommate for a semester. I didn't talk to him much and remember him mostly as a mild-mannered and competent jazz drummer who wore pomo specs and kept his corner clean.

Lead singer Karen O (Orzolek), on the other hand, was a shy and nerdy hapa girl with a close-cropped flapper cut. She only spent a semester at Oberlin, and as far as I could tell, she spent most of it at The Feve, Oberlin's local coffee shop cum bar.

Throw in non-Obie Nick Zinner, a vampire-goth guitarist who combines, if you can believe it, peals of white noise with soaring, lyrical lines, and you've got one of the best love songs of the decade.