It’s time for us to let loose a little bit and get more comfortable with you, our readers. A favorite song is one you hold close to your heart. It got you through this bullshit year 2016AD. It might be a song we need to keep us going in 2017 too. Stream our playlist and read up on why these songs were hand-selected as our favorites of the year.

Told Slant, “Tsunami”

Like some sort of fucked up emotional Pavlov’s Bell, every time I hear “Tsunami” I tear up. The first several times I listened to this song were live, and I had been waiting two years for a recorded version of it. I couldn’t wait any longer last fall. After a devastating unrequited crush, I bootlegged a YouTube video of a live radio session of this song onto a mixtape for myself. I read an interview where Felix Walworth stated that this song was to be a reminder to love yourself when no one else would. I took this to heart and would listen to this mixtape when I felt unloved. I had this song to hold me together.

Earlier this year I popped that mixtape into a janky cassette player, and it unraveled. With the unraveling of that mixtape and the release of their album Going By, I no longer needed that crutch to love myself and feel whole. The song’s roots had grown deep and permanent in my chest. I no longer cry out of sadness when the bell goes off; I cry in happiness, because I have finally found a way to love myself.

–Christine Varriale

Rihanna, “Kiss it Better”

In a just world, many things would have gone differently in 2016. “Kiss It Better” getting all the radio airplay of “Closer,” the hit single by the Chainsmokers (ft. Halsey), would have been a worthy corrective to all the terrible things this year wrought. “Kiss It Better” is an infectious jam with Prince-inspired guitars. Rihanna implores: “Man, fuck your pride / just take it on back, boy.” It’s the cut off ANTI you might not have heard, but it’s the one you most definitely should.

–Jeremy Stanley

Mal Devisa, “Sea of limbs intro/Sea of limbs”

To any issue, Mal Devisa’s voice is the cure, and this song is the most cathartic spoonful of honey I’ve ever swallowed. Rarely does my year’s most-played song slow down my thinking and make me breathe more deeply. And yet, “Sea of Limbs” took me by the shoulders from my first listen and still maintains its grip. It’s a warm squeeze for confusing nights, a high five for relationships juggled, and an ode to not blaming yourself for the coming and going of people from our minds, hearts and front doors.

“If you swim in a sea of limbs, don’t be surprised when someone tries to grab you.” I’ve surely been reached out to this year in good ways and bad. Whoever you are, thank you.

–Becca DeGregorio

Car Seat Headrest, “The Ballad of the Costa Concordia”

On paper, “The Ballad of the Costa Concordia” seems like a terrible idea. It poses an international catastrophe as a metaphor for personal mistakes, features enough unique guitar parts to flesh out an EP, and lobs in the entire chorus of Dido’s “White Flag” right at the height of the tension. But Will Toledo committed to it anyway, and somehow he collaged that whole mess together into a searing depiction of self-sabotage, shirked accountability, and pain without perspective that’s both awful and achingly human. It’s one of the most audacious songwriting feats that I’ve heard in 2016, but it feels so necessary by the end of every listen that I don’t think I’ll get over it in 2017 either.

–Karen Muller

Frank Ocean, “Self Control”

Artists will forever attest that they make albums to verbalize their head spaces, but Frank Ocean genuinely made Blonde feel like a tour of the cerebral, fleeting thoughts and insecurities included. With tabs of acid making fast years fly by on “Solo”/“Skyline To”, “Self Control” is both the lucid comedown of Blonde’s first half and one of the album’s most soul-baring moments. With Alex G’s minimal, bluesy guitar work and Ocean belting with the passion of a person trying to end a relationship while impossibly clinging to its warmest attributes, “Self Control” embodies complicated heartbreaks in a more nuanced way than most in 2016. It’s bittersweet, crying quietly on a dance floor, a little desperate for past days, but it’s resolved. It never feels right leaving the safety that’s under the sheets, but still, it ends when it must.

–Tim Gagnon

Childish Gambino, “Me and Your Mama”

With the leadoff track from Awaken, My Love!, Donald Glover shocked us with a completely new direction: intensely soulful funk. After an extended introduction of breezy keyboards and synths, we hear a deep laugh, and Gambino, wailing, implores the listener to “Do what you want:” advice he has clearly taken into this thrilling new territory.

–Harry Gustafson

Warehouse, “Reservoir”

This song stood as a voice of comfort and hope within a year in which I needed it the most. Acknowledging the darkest of thoughts, the song’s contrasting perspective lays out to something that much more beautiful. I’ve never heard a song that can resemble that soft, yet fiery inspiration derived from a solid talk with a close friend as well as “Reservoir,” and for that, I’m keeping it in my back pocket for whenever I need that loving push.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Unfortunately, Warehouse had to cancel their most recent Boston show this past October with Kal Marks, due to health reasons, but here’s to hoping that they come back around in the new year to guide us through.

–Lauren Moquin

Hinds, “Easy”

What better title for an album released in 2016 exists than Leave Me Alone? “Easy” was one track I found myself going back to over and over again. I’m disappointed that this album as a whole was overlooked by many year end lists, this single in particular. This is perhaps because this song deviated from the band’s image of fun-loving party people. The song serves as a reminder that the same band that can pump you up can knock your heart out of your chest. Hinds looks like they are having the most fun of any band out there and seem to be near-constantly touring. That’s some serious musicianship that I don’t think is being given nearly enough credit. Not to mention, Hinds is writing songs that are not in their native tongue, and yet their message still resonates. Musicians take note: Hinds is doing it right. So please, spend some time alone with this track (and the rest of this album).

–Jenny Usovicz

Food Court, “Gravel”

I discovered Providence locals Food Court this fall with the release of their self titled album and fell immediately in love. Although the whole album is near and dear to my heart, “Gravel” was impossible for me to take off repeat. When I wasn’t listening to this song, I was thinking about it. “Gravel” embodies the humble genius of Food Court; it is at times personal and moving, and at others slightly silly, but always powerful and genuine. “Is it better to be in a bowl than in the belly of a bigger fish?”

–Sami Martasian

Radiohead, “Burn the Witch”

As some people may know, and others may be extremely surprised, I’m a massive Radiohead fan, or maybe I just mostly pretend to be one. “Burn the Witch” was their first single, supporting their new album A Moon Shaped Pool, and it made for an excellent comeback. It reminded us that they never truly left. This may be because the song has been worked on for over 15 years. Taking decades to perfect music is something Radiohead is of no stranger. They make us wait, they grow, they invest their real life experiences into the music we consume, and we feel it. This is just the background, but the actual music is what really sells me on this. Johnny Greenwood, plucking our heartstrings col legno to introduce the song, gets my heart beating. It creates this uneasy feeling that prepares you for some sort of war. That accompanied by slightly unorthodox drum patterns; a disintegrated, crumbling ending; and of course, depressing and coded Thom Yorke lyrics; make for a great introduction to A Moon Shaped Pool, and another Radiohead classic.

–Cliff Notez

Krill, “Meat”

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt as much excitement as I did listening to the first track off Krill’s posthumous self-titled EP. Even before clicking play, I was hit with a wave of heavy, nervous, and preemptive nostalgia that can only be understood by the cult of Krill’s bizarre and spiritual following. Upon listening, I immediately remembered all the reasons I came to love Krill since seeing them live for the first time: the feelings of loneliness, humility, and isolation that somehow felt validated rather than attention seeking; the off-putting guitar melodies that were simultaneously energetic and powerful; and the soft bass lines paired with Jonah Furman’s worried contemplations about the future. “Meat” is the band at its best, and the song serves to reminds us why Krill is in fact, forever.

–Ethan Hoffman-Sadka

Twin Peaks, “Walk to the One You Love”

I like to walk around listening to music, sometimes to my girlfriend’s apartment, so this song is appropriately titled. Twin Peaks are a wild time live and a joyous, melodic, and retro sounding rock band on record. This is the opening track off of their stellar 2016 album Down in Heaven, which was recorded out in the mountains of Western Massachusetts. I can’t help but crack a smile when I hear this one.

–Corwin Wickersham IV

Lady Lamb, “Salt”

Aly Spaltro, the Brunswick-to-Brooklyn artist better known by her dreamed-up moniker, Lady Lamb, sings “Salt” in a way that puts the listener in the same small, albeit acoustically balanced, room. She croons low and hushed at first, almost too quiet for the listener to even realize she’s singing. The first two verses are poetic, sleepy, and bathed in the same dreamy, rose-colored light that some early winter mornings are.

But on the last line of the second verse, her voice erupts with every ounce of the passion and doubt that comes with being in love. It’s her cadence– pained and desperate and still booming– that makes that line, along with the rest of the song, believable and genuine.

Accompanying her December 2016 EP, Tender Warriors Club, Lady Lamb has a manifesto. In so many words, it asks us and herself to be sensitive, vulnerable, true, and present. While the entire EP supports this frame of mind, there’s something about “Salt” that specifically evokes it. In the song, Spaltro describes such an abstract feeling, mournful for a relationship that hasn’t ended, and her lyrics feel somber, even nostalgic, perhaps for moments that just recently happened. It’s this nostalgia that latches on and stays there, making you feel her words long after the last note sounds, and that’s what makes it my song of the year.

–Jackie Swisshelm