[Tigermoth]

There are still great lyricists out there.

A few of these guys died too young, but they're still fairly recent:

Leonard Cohen (not recent, but he's still around)
Tom Waits (same here)
Jeff Buckley
Nick Drake
Elliott Smith
Neko Case

Pryor's list is great. When it comes to excellent music being made now, I'd add:

The Black Keys
The Dirtbombs
The Shins (I like the music, but the lyrics particularly can be brilliant)

Underground is the new mainstream. You can find some really good, radio-friendly music just under the surface. Who actually listens to Top 40 anymore? Dig a little deeper, and you'll find some incredible stuff, like Mike Patton, Animal Collective, Billy Bragg, Devendra Banhart...

Go any further down and you'll get amazing, more experimental stuff like Nervous Cabaret, Philip Roebuck, the Gunga Din, Jim O'Rourke. All very impressive musicians.

Any deeper, and it gets weird.

We won't have another Bob Dylan, but I for one don't miss him all that much. There's too much good stuff still out there waiting to be discovered to sit around lamenting a single musician.

Now, when Tom Waits dies, I may change my mind on that.