Los Campesinos! have come a long way in five years of playing music together. When we heard the Welsh band’s Sticking Fingers Into Sockets EP in 2007, we were instantly enamored of their twee-pop earworms with lyrics that you couldn’t help shouting along to. Since then, they’ve released three albums, each with progressively darker lyrics and a more aggressive, dissonant sound. So we were amused and unsurprised to hear that their new album, to be released tomorrow in the US, would be titled Hello Sadness, and were excited to absorb it in full (it’s now streaming over at NPR).

But Los Campesinos! are hardly the only twee band to grace us with new music in 2011. For those of you who are new to the indie-pop world, or who haven’t visited it in awhile, allow us to catch you up. Pop music has always been more about singles than albums, particularly in the age of iTunes. Inspired by Hello Sadness‘s lead single, “By Your Hand,” we’ve gathered up a selection of the best indie-pop songs of this year. As a bonus, we’ve also rated how well the album stands up in comparison. Enjoy, and tell us what we left out in the comments.

Los Campesinos! — “By Your Hand”

Last year’s Los Campesinos! LP Romance is Boring was one of our favorite albums of the year. It was dark, sad, full of neuroses, and incorporated some noise. With a title like Hello Sadness, we expected more of the same from this album, but the opener “By Your Hand” is more reminiscient of the band’s earlier, more twee material. But it’s not all kittens and unicorns. The song epitomizes the angsty, dark humor Los Campesinos! fans love, with lyrics that somehow manage to fit sexual frustration, hand jobs, and murder into one pun.

Does the album hold up? After an early evaluation (we’ve only had it for a week), it’s our least favorite Los Campesinos! release so far, but there are still some great songs. Comparative Sadness Rating: like the blob in the Zoloft commercial before getting on meds.