Indie: Up All Night

The best indie music should fill you with such a jolt of adrenalin that even the thought of sleep becomes laughable — these up-all-night Essentials have a combined energy that can be measured only in megatons. Your marathon of blissed-out insomnia opens with the Arctic Monkeys, and you will exchange day for night in the company of Air Traffic, the Fratellis, and Kasabian.

It's way past midnight — time to pick up the pace, with Next Steps.

Indie veterans dominate the mid-section of our selection, notably the great Morrissey, who, between "How Soon Is Now?" (1985) with the Smiths, and "Irish Blood, English Heart" (2004) as a solo artist, deserves much respect as the godfather of all things vital. Other venerable northerners here include Joy Division and those pilled-up thug-poets of Madchester, the Happy Mondays.

Dawn has broken, but your thirst for indie still requires a pint of Deep Cuts.

Our playlist has so far been Blighty-centric, so here we redress the balance with a heavy dose of indispensable Stateside indie. OK Go made "Here It Goes Again" a viral video landmark, by executing old-school dance choreography on health club running machines; the White Stripes picked up a Best Rock Song GRAMMY® for "Seven Nation Army"; and with "Bohemian Like You" the Dandy Warhols delivered a peach.

We warn you to handle our Indie: Up All Night Essentials with care, because we've handpicked the songs based on sonic potency, explosive energy, and pure, triple-distilled brilliance. The playlist spans more than two decades of exceptional leftfield rock, and includes the sardonic/frenetic Arctic Monkeys ("I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor"), the La's (whose remastered "There She Goes" is a reminder of the standard to which all must aspire, even though it inexplicably failed to chart on its original release in 1988), and Blur (alongside splinter-project tunes from Gorillaz and Graham Coxon).