In a very preliminary survey of some “Best of 2008″ lists floating around, it appears that Seattle musicians have fared well. Amazon.com, in particular, dished out some love for the Northwest. On it’s list of the year’s top albums, as chosen by its editors, Fleet Foxes’ self-titled full-length was ranked third, Death Cab for Cutie’s Narrow Stairs was sixth, and Throw Me the Statue’s Moonbeams came in at 16th. Portland’s the Helio Sequence showed up at number 40 with Keep Your Eyes Ahead, and Joshua Morrison’s Home came in 51st. Jake One’s album White Van Music was dubbed the fourth-best hip-hop album of the year on Amazon’s Best Hip-Hop of 2008 list. Meanwhile on Amazon’s Best Songs of 2008 list, Fleet Foxes scored big again, with “White Winter Hymnal” charting in at number four (behind “American Boy (feat. Kanye)” by Estelle, “Love Lockdown,” by Kanye, and “The Most Beautiful Girl [In The Room]” by Flight of the Conchords). Throw Me the Statue’s “Lolita” was 26th, and the Saturday Knights’ “45″ was 43rd. Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head cracked the top 60 with “Sophisticated Side Ponytail,” and Joshua Morrison wasn’t far behind, with “Westport” at 67.

Maybe this is just regional favoritism (Amazon is a Seattle company, after all), but we’ve got a sneaking suspicion that at least a couple of these bands will be popping on all sorts of “Best of 2008″ lists. And yes, in a sense year-end lists are pretty meaningless: anyone can make one and there are a TON of them out there. But if there’s one set of “Best of 2008″ lists that matters, it’s Amazon’s. It is, after all, the largest online retailer (as well as the number two digital music retailer), which means that, at the very least, a lot of people will be reading those lists.