I’ve been writing for Geeks of Doom since April 2008. In that time I have written about the occasional soundtrack release, but never before in my time or anywhere else have I attempted to write a list of the best new music I heard over the course of a year. Please bear with me, dear readers as I get into my picks for my Top 10 Albums of 2015.

Two years before I joined the Geeks writing staff, I was employed by my local Tower Records and Video. From the summer of 1999 to just a few days shy of Christmas 2006 when the nationwide chain shut down forever, I worked full time at Tower and loved almost every minute of my time there. Each day I was exposed to music from countless genres, and having that job deepened my appreciation of music I either dabbled in previously or was never exposed to at all. I was listening to a lot more rap, jazz, opera, bluegrass, gospel, and indie rock than ever before and developing a deeply emotional and intellectual appreciation for how each album was lovingly crafted and the unique history behind every song.

We ring in the New Year with our first new show of 2014! This week we discuss a new Pebble watch, cloud gaming on Sony PlayStation, T-Mobile wants to pay you to switch, Facebook is dead to teens, are digital music downloads already obsolete?…the legacy of the Snowden NSA leaks, and a cube that balances on its edge.

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The World’s End has arrived; not the actual one (that was back in December 2012, so we were told), but the third and final movie in writer-director Edgar Wright and writer-star Simon Pegg‘s genre-bending and blending “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy – read my review here – that also includes Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

This past Tuesday, the soundtrack was made available was released on CD and MP3. As with his filmmaking contemporaries Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, Edgar Wright plans out the various songs he intends to feature in his movies early in the pre-production stage and uses them to express the inner thoughts and emotions of his characters when dialogue simply won’t do the trick. In a recent interview with Indiewire, Wright went track by track on the World’s End O.S.T. and discussed the role each selected tune plays in the film’s narrative.

According to the director the songs that comprise the soundtrack were chosen specifically as a means of linking the character Gary, played by Pegg, to his fruitless pursuit of good times all the time in the face of middle age.

In the summer of 2004 Patton Oswalt‘s career in comedy went supernova almost overnight when his first stand-up CD Feelin’ Kinda Patton was released. In that instant he evolved from a moderately well-known comedian and King of Queens co-star to one of the universe’s funniest and imaginative personalities. Three years after the release of his first CD, Oswalt made a blazing return to record stores with his brilliantly titled follow-up album Werewolves and Lollipops; its unheralded genius, coupled with the successful theatrical release that summer of the Pixar animated delight Ratatouille, confirmed Oswalt as a force to be reckoned with in the world of comedy.

This month, Patton Oswalt’s epic second comedy album is on sale at Amazon as part of their monthly $5 MP3 deal. You can also check out more of these deals at the main sale page and order Werewolves and Lollipops on CD here.

Green Day‘s fourth album, Insomniac, was a darker affair than its predecessors but is considered by some as the album the Californian trio has never bettered. Right now you can download the brilliant Insomniac for $5 on Amazon.com.

Before they got all political and tried to stick it to “The Man,” Green Day wrote impossibly catchy punk rock. Songs like “Geek Stink Breath” and “Walking Contradiction” for a long time defined their sound and were hugely influential to the genre in the mid-90s.

Every month Amazon reduces the price of 100 MP3 albums to only $5. The deals run out at the end of the month, so if you want an MP3 copy of Insomniac at this price order before December 31, 2011,11:59 PST.