Indie Rock Love Songs

You and yours — you’re not like everybody else, and your love is no cookie-cutter thing, so when it comes to tunes to express it, corporate creations will simply not do. You need Indie Rock Love Songs, our set of sonic swooners to suit your very individual needs. Looking for romantic atmosphere à la strange? Try the sweeping soundscape of Icelandic priestess Björk and “All Is Full of Love.” Maybe something a little more intimate? The meant-to-be innocence of the White Stripes and “We’re Going to Be Friends” is all sweetness and light in a song. How about something classic yet distinctly unique? Recruit the Jesus and Mary Chain, and let your edgy alterna-crush know she’s “Just Like Honey.”

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Everybody has a beating heart — sometimes it just tha-thumps to a different beat. You know who we’re talking about — the scruffy sweetheart who thrills to the rough-but-right joy of indie godfathers the Replacements’ “Kiss Me On the Bus.” The brooding but beautiful morsel who hearkens to the haunting drift of the Magnetic Fields’ “The Book of Love.” The tattooed love god(ess) who tears into the raw sounds of PJ Harvey’s “Ecstasy.” Even the (slightly) settled family type, whose heart is warmed by Animal Collective and their shimmering waves of love for “My Girls.”

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Like a lonely wanderer searching for a soul mate, we’ve traveled the far corners — from basement to garage, from club to coffee shop — to gather together the best in cutting-edge D.I.Y. and otherwise out-of-the-box indie rock love songs. The result is a potpourri of tuneful heart-tuggers that state their cases in their own, distinctive ways — through the intensive study in expression that is Ed Harcourt’s “Metaphorically Yours,” or in the subtle, alt-country plea of the Decemberists’ “Angel, Won’t You Call Me?”; by way of the dreamy retro yearning of The Clientele’s “(I Want You) More Than Ever,” or via the art-rock ache of Wolf Parade’s “This Heart’s On Fire.”

The speedy electronic zip of the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” may not sound like the setting for a great love song, but when it’s paired with some of the most devastatingly romantic lyrics this side of a sonnet, the impact is like Cupid’s arrow straight to the heart. And that’s the beauty of an indie rock love song — it’s no slick, sticky-strings affair, but a true expression of its love-struck maker’s point of view. So while the Flaming Lips declare themselves in their otherwordly take on life and love itself, “Do You Realize??,” Devendra Banhart loosens up for the free and funky come-on that is “Lover.” The late, great Nick Drake adds an element of the eternal to the simple beauty of “Time Has Told Me,” while the Yeah Yeah Yeahs let seekers of passion find their own way through the alt-rock intricacies of “Maps.”