On Saturday, February 27th, Los Angeles played host to two of contemporary music’s most iconic iconoclasts, David Longstreth and his band Dirty Projectors and Kieran Hebden, the maverick electronic-music maven better known as Four Tet.

Dirty Projectors gave music fans a post-holiday gift to celebrate a new decade today: two free songs, both unreleased, available as either a 7” vinyl single or a free download, depending on your particular audio predilection. Both songs, “Ascending Melody” and “Emblem of the World,” come from the same sessions that produced the Projectors’ indie-rock masterpiece Bitte Orca, which was universally hailed as one of the best albums of 2009 by critics and real people alike.

What a long, strange trip it’s been to this moment in music. The headlines are all too familiar – major labels are dying, download this, download that, blahblahblah… All the hubbub over technology and filthy lucre has obscured what is becoming increasingly clear: 2009 may be the best year for music in a decade – a veritable golden age, if you will, captured in a twelve-month period.

I always thought that the Dirty Projectors’ “Stillness Is The Move” sounded like Destiny’s Child on some indie-rock druggage, and well, my dreams have been answered by the gods. Actual Beyoncé relative and Boards of Canada fan Solange Knowles has gone and taken “Stillness Is The Move” to its future R&B essence, brought to us by the all-knowing indie oracle pitchfork.com.

Dirty Projectors have it all: the akimbo folk soul of Jeff Buckley, iconoclastic pop deconstruction a la Panda Bear, irresistibly ethereal, strange harmonies recalling School of Seven Bells, surprisingly effective ethnic cops evoking their Ivy League peers in Vampire Weekend – and contender for possibly album of 2009 in the band’s latest release, Bitte Orca.