I listened to a lot of music this year; these 21 tracks were the ones I kept coming back to with each passing month.

This mix is a collection of songs that helped me get through the year — that encouraged, uplifted, challenged, and yes, moved me.

2016 sucked in many ways. But there was beautiful music to be heard in the midst of the year’s ugliness.

These songs may not have been in my top picks but they still deserve notice in their own right.

Sleepy trip-hop, atmospheric indie-electronic, religious experimental folk, harrowing post-punk/EBM, mournful folk & experimental electronic rock.

Incendiary hip-hop, soaring shoegaze, aggressive indie-rock, poignant synth-wave, thought-provoking emo & atmospheric rock.

Soulful hip-hop, lo-fi psychedelia, ambient dub, soaring electronic pop, abstract electronica, and otherworldly neo-folk.

Ominous ambience, funky hip-hop, pan-global instrumentals, crushing electronica, elegant post-punk, and forlorn post-rock.

Post-punk shoegaze, confessional ballads, solo piano, psychedelic pop, and more. Oh, and Weird Al as well.

Acoustic folk, emo done right, soulful electronic pop, twee, ’80s synth ballads, hip-hop, and more.

Swirling shoegaze, Christian psych-rock, dark ambient and industrial, ’80s-style disco pop, and more.

None of these songs are actually on my year-end list, but they easily could’ve been.

Soaring ’80s pop, charming modern classical, brooding indie-rock, atmospheric sludge metal, dreamy R&B, and more.

Tropical dub from Sweden, blistering post-rock, contemplative ambient jazz, emotional drones, an electronic journey through space, and more.

Featuring gloriously mopey ’80s pop, robotic heartbreak, shimmering dreampop, late night ambience, and the return of a music legend.

This year’s list spans from apocalyptic post-rock to black metal to EBM to psych-pop to synthpop.

Fifteen songs (plus ten honorable mentions) that stood out from the rest in 2011.

Listed in such a way as to make for a nice listening experience if you were to listen to them as an actual mix.

These are my favorite songs of 2009, the songs that stuck with me and continued to challenge, inspire, and entertain me throughout the months.

These are simply my favorite songs of the year, ones that never got old but continued to excite, challenge, and inspire.