1. Michael Yonkers with the Blind Shake, "Don't I Get" (from Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons, Michael Yonkers)
2. Brother Ali, "The Puzzle" (from The Undisputed Truth, Rhymesayers)
3. Zachariah, "Cool J Planets" (from White Jesus, Interlock)
4. The Owls, "Peppermint Patty" (from Daughters and Suns, Magic Marker)
5. Little Man, "Soulful Automatic" (from Soulful Automatic, Eclectone)
6. Dan Wilson ft. Amy Jennings, "Free Life" (from Free Life American)
7. Ed Ackerson, "Flashes of Light" (from Ed Ackerson, Susstones)
8. Shatterproof, "Septemberine" (from Splinter Queen, Catlick)
9. Golden, "Falling" (from Peddling Medicine, FreeFlow/SOL)
10. Maria Isa, "Yo Lo Quiero" (from M.I. Split Personalities, Emetrece Productions/Smoke Signals)
11. Indigo, "What Do?" (from Kiri'Ke, Dynamite Panic)
12. Big Quarters ft. I Self Divine, "How to Kill Your Rap Career" (from Cost of Living, Big Quarters)
13. Mouthful of Bees, "The Now" (from The End, Afternoon)
14. The Great Physician, "Filled to the Brim" (from Overture, Broken Product)
15. Desdamona, "The Source" (from The Source, Zink/FS Music)
16. Moochy C ft. EMS and Slug, "The Club" (from I Know What I'm Worth, self-released)
17. Carnage, "Orientation" (from Sense of Sound, Hecatomb)
18. Fog, "I Have Been Wronged" (from v/a, Radiok.org, University of Minnesota/Noiseland Industries)
19. Mystery Palace, "Nascar Survivor" (from Mystery Palace, Zodrecords.com)
20. M.anifest, "Manifestations" (from Manifestations, www.manifestmc.com)
21. Ice-Rod, "Freaky Puppy" (from various artists, Sixth Annual Twin Cities Celebration of Hip Hop, Copycats)
22. Kwang, "She's Sophisticated" (from For what it's worth..., Root of All Evil)
23. Pert' Near Sandstone, "Summer Skies" (from Up and Down the River, www.pertnearsandstone.com)

Every December, I wonder if people in other cities are doing the same thing I am in the wee hours of the morning—namely, catching up on stacks of local CDs from the previous 12 months. How do our scenes compare? And do other towns have secrets as sweet? We'd need thousands of homemade local 80-minute CD-R compilations from around the globe to tell, and until we do, there's no way to know if Minnesota, U.S.A., is as relatively rich as I suspect it is. (If you want to hear this and judge for yourself, email petescholtes at gmail dot com.) Still, it says something that this fan of Low and Prince had to leave out Low and Prince from his '07 MN mix-CD in a year when both artists released good stuff. Word to my discard pile: I also rejected the Hold Steady covering Dylan (a match made in New York more than Minnesota), comebacks by Tom Hazelmyer and Greg Norton (I prefer music with lyrics), and rising mixtape rapper Trama name-dropping yours truly (I'm vain, but not that vain).

Even without bigger names, though, I'm able to open with two figures of international cult stature: Michael Yonkers, the spine-injured '60s psych guitarist now teamed with a two-ax punk trio to sound like Buddy Holly fronting Fugazi; and Brother Ali, the blind Muslim white albino rapper, who turns his sonorous bark into a supple instrument of sensitive-badass blues. Look them in the eyes and tell them that they're satisfied.

As it happens, Brother Ali first raised eyebrows battling MCs at local events hosted by Zachariah, a.k.a. New MC of Kanser, a.k.a. Big Zach, a.k.a. White Jesus—himself an ultra-casual battle champion whose distinct nasal flow and humorous frankness never quite came across on CD until now. He's a taken-for-granted scene fixture suddenly ablaze, much like Little Man, a.k.a. the diminutive Chris Perricelli plus friends, the rare '70s-loving guitar virtuoso whose voice is even more expressive and distinct. (That's him on backups, too.) The slow-burning Owls are simply one of the finest new bands since I don't know when, and easily the catchiest boy-girl-boy-girl multi-songwriter set-up since Fleetwood Mac. Generous with arrangements and hooks, while withholding when it comes to vocal inflection or conspicuous displays of technique, they seem to have beamed their very deep pop songs straight from the imagination and into their still-learning fingers and throats, unimpeded by any distracting ability. (On a personal note: I wrote cover stories for City Pages this year about both Little Man and Brother Ali, and saved my last one ever for the Owls, which hit print shortly after I left the newspaper for good after ten years.)

The Owls and Little Man in some ways feel like the culmination of a local pop movement initially nourished by these vets in the early '90s: Dan Wilson of Semisonic and Trip Shakespeare, Ed Ackerson of Polara and the Susstones label, and Shatterproof singer-songwriter Jay Hurley, whose earlier Hovercraft was my first in-person band interview. (Shatterproof's new album was also recorded in 1996, and I imagine there's a major-label horror story there somewhere.) If you notice a sonic trend so far, it might be the increasing pull towards those twin contemporary pop commonplaces: acoustic guitars in rock and pop melodies in rap.

Maria Isa was the subject of a 2006 cover story I wrote about reggaeton, but as you can tell from this track, she's as pan-musical as M.I.A., and her melodic sense fits snugly between Fergie collaborator Golden and former I Self Devine student Indigo (breaking out here with Technicolor musicality). In truth, there are only so many ways to restate the DIY ethos in rap, but Big Quarters somehow found an ingenious new tack on "How to Kill Your Rap Career," offering advice in reverse over a hardcore beat, with I Self himself on guest vocal: "Fuck family, they just want paper/Fuck independence, go major/Don't follow your heart, make hits/Publishing and points ain't shit."

A newish guitar sound from an indie band is just as rare, so here's a big yellow smile to Mouthful of Bees frontman Chris Farstad for his warm fuzzies, though he seems to have gone to the J. Mascis school of singing. The Great Physician are another guitar band beneath strings so apparently decorous that I thought the song would wither and blow away once its underlying elements sank in. Instead the arrangement sticks, and the mystery of the lyric thickens—something about living above your class. By contrast, with Desdamona what you hear is what you get, though her way with the literal and the true is so eloquent and pleasing that her spoken-word pulls you in like the rap that it's not.

Desdamona collaborator Moochy C established himself as one of the more comically needy tough guys on the local message board DUNation before turning around with a surprising sophomore album that makes good on its pretensions to unite "gangsters" and "backpackers." On "The Club," Slug (of Atmosphere) surveys his surroundings, and jokes about the incongruity of even being here: "All these women look like goddamn strippers/And I bet these dudes probably carry hand mirrors." Of course, such social lines have blurred for years in Minnesnowta, with Carnage reaching out to guitarist Bill Mike on his latest, MF Doom pal Andrew Broder fronting the increasingly prog Fog, and Ryan Olcott, the former frontman of 12 Rods, ditching his Police-like brassiness for breakbeats and quiet melodicism with Mystery Palace.

M.anifest would probably get beat up for the line, "Civilize the savages/Throw your mind overboard like slaves in Middles Passages," if he weren't Ghanaian-born, and if so many young black rappers around here weren't already using Africa and slavery as the punch line for putting down peers with darker skin. Happily, my 2006 piece about the more recent Diaspora in local rap introduced M.anifest to a young Kenyan MC named Baraka, a small step towards East Coast/West Coast unity among local Africans. Meanwhile, there's the thoroughly white-American playboy ironist Ice-Rod, with a priceless compilation track comparing his bad self to a naughty puppy. The metallic Kwang are nearly as funny: You don't have to get the local references to glean the anti-snobbery behind "Well, we don't sound current and we can't get a gig at the Triple Rock—like we care/We can play over there/Baby, come and see what we got in store/On the other side of town, rocking out at Station 4."

It might take a local to know that the band name Pert' Near Sandstone is a nod to the very Minnesota phrase "pert' near," which means "pretty near," and to the town of Sandstone. Along with Trampled by Turtles, this outfit is leading a generation of freaks into straight-up bluegrass rather than the watered-down jam-band kind. Even if every other city on earth has hippies, few, if any, could close things out this lovely.

Peter Scholtes is a freelance writer in Minneapolis.