The music world is frequently awash with news that this or that johnny-come-lately hit band got where it’s at due to the tectonic bluzz of the music blogosphere. Many music fans including, until recently, us, assume this means Pitchfork and NME and go along their merry way, never knowing the frightening music underworld, dank with incestuous linkage and the often licit posting of mp3s, dirty with the latest mashups and double secret background band gossip that would make Karl Rove blush. Which is too bad, because these guys are the dingy record store clerks of yesteryear, the masters of everything new and obscure, and the source of many of life’s great palaver pushers, music lists. We love lists. One day, we might even make one of our own.

For now, however, we can rely on one courtesy of music blogger kingpin — and DCist! — Kyle Gustafson who, for the third year running, has assembled a crack team of experts (including three from D.C.) to choose their Top Forty Bands in America. The conceits are simple: the bands must be American, or mainly American (US residents from other countries do not count), and it’s up to the contributor how they care to define “best.”

We here at the DCist music desk, excepting Kyle, were a little surprised by the results. And, being bloggers ourselves, we couldn’t help but add our two cents.