• Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Me and Mia

Do you believe in something beautiful? / Then get up and be it!

• Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

You feel terrified at the thought of being left behind / Of losing everybody, the necessity of dying / Oh, we kid ourselves, there's future in the fucking / But there is no fucking future / I'm just practicing my accents, picking at old sutures

• The National - Available

did you dress me down and liquor me up / to make me last for the minute when the red comes over you / like it does when you're filled with love or whatever you call it / do you feel alone when I'm in my head/when you wait for me to take my breath/do you still feel clean when the only dirt is the dirt I left / how can you blame yourself when I did everything I wanted to/you just made yourself available / you just made yourself available/why do you dress me down / and liquor me up?

• Elliot Smith - A Fond Farewell

A little less than a human being / A little less than a happy high / A little less than a suicide / The only things you really tried

• Sunset Rubdown - Idiot Heart

And if I found you in this city, and called it Paradise / I say, I love you but I hate this city, and I'm no prize

• Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely

Say what you want to say / And hang for you hollow ways / Moving your mouth to pull out all your miracles/For me

• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues

The line God throws down to you and me / Makes pleasing geometry / Shall we leave this place now, dear? / Is there someway out of here?

• Cloud Cult - When Water Comes to Life

And when the angels come / They'll cut you down the middle / To see if you're still there / To see if you're still there / And underneath your ribs / They'll find a heart shaped locket / An old photograph / Of you in daddy's arms / And they they'll sew you closed / And give you back to the water / From where we're all born

• The National - 29 Years

My swan will never sing / I have no heart, the swan is gone / And now I wear the wings

• M. Ward - Poison Cup

If love, if love, is a poison cup / Then drink it up / 'Cause a sip, a sip, or a spoonful won't do / Won't do nothing for you / But mess you up

• Frightened Rabbit - Keep Yourself Warm

Can you see in the dark? / Can you see the look on your face? / The flashing white light's been turned off / You don't know who's in your bed / It take more than fucking someone you don't know to keep yourself warm

• Elliot Smith - King's Crossing

I can't prepare for death anymore than I already have / All you can do now is watch the shells / The game looks easy, that's why it sells / Frustrated fireworks inside your head/Are you going to stand and deliver, talk instead / The method acting that pays my bills / Keeps a fat man feeding in Beverly Hills / I got a heavy metal mouth that hurls obscenity / And I get my check from the trash treasury / Because I took my own insides out

• Los Campesinos! - There Are Listed Buildings

"And oh, I am a glutton for love, can you give me some romance? I'm a glutton for sin." / We are but two atheists in lust, you know, we gotta make our own luck

• The Antlers - Sylvia

Let me do my job / Sylvia, get your head out of the oven / Go back to screaming and cursing / remind me again how everyone betrayed you / Sylvia, get your head out of the covers / Let me take your temperature / you can throw the thermometer right back at me / if that's what you want to do, okay? / Sylvia, can't you see what you are doing? / Can't you see I'm scared to speak and I hate my voice 'cause it only makes you angry / Sylvia, I only talk when you are sleeping / That's when I tell you everything / And I imagine that somehow you're going to hear me.

• Voxtrot - Soft & Warm

baby, I'd leave you for the person you used to be

• Beulah - Night Is the Day Turned Inside Out

I don't love you to death, but I'd die if you left

• WHY? - Gemini (Birthday Song)

When we're on different sides of the globe / I thought we'd keep our veins tangled like a pair of mic cables / And if there ain't enough slack to reach that we'd solder them together and across oceans they'd stretch

I want a verb and you give me a noun / What do you dream up while I tongue you down?

• Beirut - Elephant Gun

And it rips through the silence, all that is left is all that I hide

• Los Campesinos! - Miserabilia

Shout at the world because the world doesn't love you / Lower yourself because you know that you'll have to

• Radiohead - No Surprises

A heart that's full up like a landfill / A job that slowly kills you / Bruises that won't heal / You look so tired, unhappy / Bring down the government / They don't, they don't speak for us / I'll take the quiet life / A handshake of carbon monoxide / No alarms and no surprises, please

• Beulah - A Good Man Is Easy to Kill

I made a prayer for you / I prayed some more that it'd come true / Don't know about God but I believe in you

• The National - Cardinal Song

Let her treat you like a criminal / So you can treat her like a priest / Girls forgive my human mind / Girls forgive me one more time

• Okkervil River - On Tour with Zykos

How come I shout goodbye when God knows I just want to make this white lie big enough to climb inside with you

• Arcade Fire - Wake Up

If the children don't grow up / Our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up

• WHY? - Simeon's Dilemma

You're mostly what I think about and I'm proud / I've been coasting on this singles route / But I still hear your name in wedding bells / Will I look better or will I look the same rotting in hell? / You're the only proper noun I need

• Andrew Bird - Fake Palindromes

my dewy-eyed disney bride, what has tried / swapping your blood with formaldehyde? / what monsters that talk, monsters that walk the earth

• Okkervil River - For Real

I want to know this time if you're really finally mine / I need to know that you're not lying so I want to see you tried / And I don't want to hear you say it shouldn't really be this way / 'Cause I like this way just fine / 'Cause there's nothing quite like the blinding light / That curtains cast aside

• Animal Collective - The Purple Bottle

Sometimes I'm naked and thank god sometimes you're naked. Well, hello...

• Peter Bjorn and John - Objects of My Affection

I laugh more often now, I cry more often now / I am more me

• of Montreal - The Party's Crashing Us

You free me from the past / You fucked the suburbs out of me

• The National - Cherry Tree

Don't look at me, I'm only breathing / Don't look at me, I'm indiscreet

• Iron & Wine - Flightless Bird, American Mouth

Have I found you, flightless bird, jealous, weeping or lost you, American mouth.

• Silver Jews - Random Rules

In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection / Slowly screwing my way across Europe, they had to make a correction / Broken and smokin' where the infrared deer plunge in the digital snake / I tell you, they make it so you can't shake hands when they make your hands shake

• Radiohead - Sulk

You are so pretty / When you're on your knees / Disinfected, eager to please

• Neutral Milk Hotel - The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1

And your mom would stick a fork right into daddy's shoulder / And dad would throw the garbage all across the floor / As we would lay and learn what each other's bodies were for / And this is the room / One afternoon I knew I could love you / And from above you how I sank into your soul / Into that secret place where no one dares to go

• The Antlers - Bear

We're terrified of one another and terrified of what that means

• TV on the Radio - Young Liars

Lonely is all we are / Lovely so far, but my heart's still a marble in an empty jelly jar / Someday suppose that my curious nervousness stills into prescience, clairvoyant consciousness / I will be calmer than cream, making maps out of your dreams

• Silver Jews - Random Rules

I asked the painter why the roads are colored black. He said, "Steve, it's because people leave and no highway will bring them back."

• Belle & Sebastian - The State I Am In

I gave myself to sin / I gave myself to providence / And I've been there and back again / The state that I am in