The Shortlist Organization will release their official "shortlist" of nominees for the sixth annual Shortlist Music Prize in a couple of weeks, narrowing the "longlist" of 61 albums of 2006 down to the Top Ten.

The Shortlist Music Prize is considered one of the highest honors in the independent and alternative rock music profession. Last year's winner, Sufjan Stevens, has taken the music world by storm, releasing one compilation of amazing music after another.


Stevens' 2005 album Illinoise is full of soft melodies, inspirational spurts of engery, lyrical intrigue and is easily one of the classic albums of the past decade.

Earlier this month, TSO released the long list of 61 nominees featuring a compendium of the best indie and alternative music of the past year, including artists such as like Snow Patrol, Arcade Fire, Mates of State, Band of Horses, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, and many more. (See below for the complete list)

The 61 nominees were selected by a panel of nine indie rock artists and journalists, including Sufjan Stevens, Franz Ferdinand, Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol, Wayne Coyne of Flaming Lips, Ronnie Vannucci of The Killers, members of Panic at the Disco, Reverend Moose, editor-in-chief of CMJ New Music Report, and a Rolling Stone magazine rock critic.

To qualify for nomination artists' albums must be released in the U.S. in the past year and not have sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide. Panelists are also looking for artists who embrace and push the envelope of the indie rock spirit of "creative and adventurous" music.

"This year's listmakers have created a streetwise playlist of state-of-the art rock, dance and hip hop," Shortlist creative director Greg Spotts said.

Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody told Top40-Charts.com that this year's Long List "looks like my own iPod." He says the melancholy "Begin to Hope" by Regina Spektor is "a gorgeous record which is simple and devastating in equal measure."

Lightbody also elegantly describes two of his favorite artists - both IRC Featured Artists - praising North Carolina's Band of Horses' Everything All the Time as "sublime, blissed out elegance" and Beirut's Gulag Orskestar as "sweeping swooning carnival" of songs, and the couple duo Mates of States Bring It Back as "twisted, warped pop."

Subscribe to this feed and watch for the Top Ten, and ultimately a full profile of the winner. The winner will be announced sometime in May.

The 61 nominees include artists from 45 different record labels and ten countries as selected by Sufjan Stevens (and based on his taste in music, you might want to check out some of these albums if you haven't already):

Against Me - Americans Abroad Live in London
And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead - So Divided
Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll
Band of Horses – Everything All the Time
Beck - The Information
Beirut – Gulag Orskestar
Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting Go
Cat Power – The Greatest
Country Teasers - The Empire Strikes Back
CSS - Cansei de Ser Sexy
Cursive - Happy Hollow
Dabrye - Two/Three
Danielson - Ships
Dead Heart Bloom - Dead Heart Bloom
Editors - The Back Room
Field Music – Field Music
Forgive Durden - Wonderland
Girl Talk - Night Ripper
Hot Chip - The Warning
Howling Bells - Howling Bells
Jeremy Enigk - World Waits
Joanna Newsom - Ys
Kidd Jordan, Hamid Drake + William Parker – Palm of Soul
Kimya Dawson - Remember that I Love You
Liars - Drum's Not Dead
Love is All - Nine Times That Same Song
Lupe Fiasco - Food & Liquor
Mates of State - Bring It Back
Matmos - The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast
Mew - And the Glass Hand Kites
Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther
Mohair - Small Talk
Mute Math - Mutemath
Neil Young – Living With War
OOIOO - Taiga
Peeping Tom - Peeping Tom
Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope
Roots - Game Theory
Secret Machines - Ten Silver Drops
Serena Maneesh - Serena Maneesh
Skream - Skream
Spank Rock - YoYoYoYoYo
Teddybears - Soft Machine
The Blow - Paper Television
The Bronx - The Bronx
The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
The Gossip – Standing In the Way of Control
The Hush Sound – Like Vines
The Knife - Silent Shout
The Stills - Without Feathers
The Strokes – First Impression of Earth
The Velvet Teen – Cum Laude
The Weepies - Say I am You
Tom Waits - Orphans
TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Vaux - Beyond Virtue Beyond Vice
We Are Scientists – With Love and Squalor
Wolfmother - Wolfmother
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Show Your Bones

Labels: Band of Horses, Franz Ferdinand, Gary Lightbody, Indie Music Awards, Mates of State, Panic at the Disco, Ronnie Vannucci, Shortlist Music Prize, Snow Patrol, Sufjan Stevens, The Killers, Wayne Coyne