Turns out, there's something that actually can be disputed on "The Undisputed Truth," Brother Ali's personal triumph of an album.

"I defy critics," the Minneapolis indie-rap star boasts in "Daylight," a song that takes on writers who ask about his skin color (albino-white) and religion (Muslim).

Annoying questions aside, critics are behind Ali all the way. That much became certain as we added up the votes in our fifth annual Twin Cities Critics Tally (TCCT), a year-end poll of local music writers' favorite albums, songs and live acts from their ever-incubating hometown scene.

That doesn't mean Ali lacked competition. The other albums that topped our list include one by a revered songwriter fresh from the Grammys podium (Dan Wilson), another by a scene stalwart who's been in three popular bands (Vicious Vicious), and several more full of the innovation, originality and hip factor that critics eat up (Cloud Cult, Fog, the Owls).

But most of all, we ate up Brother Ali. Sorry to disappoint him.

It starts with the me-vs.-the-world approach that usually defines hip-hop, but which Ali naturally redefines. Midway through his second full-length CD, the booming-voiced rapper starts venting his sociopolitical anger in the war-torn "Letter From the Government" and the Nina Simone-sampling "Uncle Sam Goddamn." Then comes the starkly personal stuff, as bleak as any divorce album gets, but ultimately as sunny as Ali's day at the Coachella fest. To quote his pal Craig Finn, this is how a resurrection really feels.

Five years in the works, the Semisonic frontman's solo debut for Rick Rubin's American Recordings sounds appropriately timeless. Wilson set aside his fuzz-poppy past for piano- and acoustic-guitar-driven arrangements that are fireside warm (think: mellow Neil Young).

Techno/folk/rock basement-taper Andrew Broder finally has the band he's always had in his head: a three-piece Fog lineup rounded out by bassist Mark Erickson and drummer Tim Glenn. The results are more cohesive and rocking but no less outlandish.

For a native of Ghana living in Minnesota, this 25-year-old rapper offered a surprisingly encyclopedic cross-section of hip-hop on his debut. He doesn't emulate anything thuggish, though, sticking to Afrocentric and positive-thinking (not preaching) tracks such as "Africa Represent," where he asks, "Whatever happen to rappin' without mentioning a gun clappin'?"

As evidenced in the ethereal single "Chemicals Collide," many worlds collide on the sixth album by Craig Minowa's psychedelic chamber-rock septet. Life and death are explored as one and the same in the lyrics. Orchestral strings and electric guitars equally fuel the music. And hippies and indie-rockers alike embraced the band.

Imagine Nico and the women of Stereolab singing Ray Davies songs with the New Pornographers as backing band and you'll get a sense of the regal, stylish, bittersweet harmony-pop featured on the first full-length by this co-ed quartet, led by Legendary Jim Ruiz co-vocalist Allison LaBonne and her husband Brian Tighe (of Hang Ups fame).

The fifth album by Duluth's king of low-down acoustic blues is his most refined and cohesive to date, from the hallowed ballad "Just Like Today" to the harrowing slide-guitar attack "Twenty-Nine" to the hilarious "Riding Mower Blues."

Anyone wondering why Ireland native Ben Kyle named his band's second album after his adopted country will get it by CD's end. The music is Americana to the bone, with tasteful bits of piano, accordion and violin (Jessy Greene's) applied to his wistful, BoDeans/Ryan Adams-style twang-pop. Kyle's Irishness bleeds into his wounded-poet lyrics.

Last year's six-song debut EP was as tightly cropped as Thom Yorke's haircut, but the broody/mighty quintet stretched out and mellowed out on its 14-song followup. It didn't lose its charming Brit-rock fixation, though (see: the Verve, Oasis and a smidgen of Radiohead).

Polara's main guy traded in his feedbacking guitars and alt-rock reputation for a softer, flowery songwriter sound on his solo debut. In the Beatles terms that Ackerson knows so well, it's more "Norwegian Wood" than "Tomorrow Never Knows."

White guy sings through his nose and bleeds from the heart on his flannel shirt-sleeve. You'll get it right away. You'll love it right away.

They're back, indeed, returning from their many other bands (the Bad Plus, Zebulon Pike, Fat Kid Wednesdays and that one with the really long name) to the jazz trio that both a Charlie Parker and a Linkin Park fan could love. "Very Small Rock," in particular, will go down as one of their best.

With a boyish, downbeat/uptempo indie-rock sound somewhere between Death Cab for Cutie and Bright Eyes, this well-polished quartet would've sounded great on "The O.C." It still sounds pretty good on the station one of its songs is named after, "89.3."

Duluth's revered indie-rock trio reunited with producer David Fridmann and Sub Pop Records and once again reinvented its sound. Electronic drums and looping whirs take over where Alan Sparhawk's electric guitar is left out, and those sweet harmonies of old are darkened by a batch of violent, fearful tunes.

Fresh out of high school, this nervy quartet made a big splash with a lo-fi slacker-ish sound akin to Pavement, Guided by Voices and at least one current band closer to its age, Tapes 'N Tapes. The mumbly, guitar-bobbing gem "The Now" leads off in more ways than one.

The tamest of the three bands anchored by drummer Drew Christopherson and electronica-wiz Ryan Olson (also of Mel Gibson & the Pants and Building Better Bombs), this one lays a futuristic soundtrack of moody, synth-laden digi-rock swirling around singer/keyboardist Maggie Morrison's Siouxsie -like drama.

A-plus for ambition. This quirky, carnival collection of Wagner-via-vaudeville music is actually the soundtrack to an "indie-rock opera" the band staged this fall.