In the Eighties and early Nineties, bands on Flying Nun Records made tiny, sheep-clogged New Zealand seem like indie-rock's last wild frontier -- an aboriginal paradise where post-Velvet Underground guitar rhapsody was pursued for its own transporting sake, untouched by irony or careerism. This anniversary retrospective samples thirty years of the label's top kiwi-pop: zoned-out strum mania from the Bats and Clean, ornery skronk from the Dead C and Gordons, bedroom clatterings from the Tall Dwarfs and Chris Knox, and 2000s inheritors of the national pretty-noise gene like the Shocking Pinks. The capper is the Chills’ kaleidoscopically lush 1990 nugget "Heavenly Pop Hit," a number-one single in NZ that can still sun up your private island too.

Listen to "Tally Ho!":

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• Photos: Random Notes

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.