Blood Orange with Eva Tolkin and Liam Benzvi, ‘Westerberg’

So much of this year’s deepest music was about grief — the emotion AI can’t feel and the algorithms can’t simulate. After losing his mother, Dev Hynes sings about traveling through time with music, revisiting songs he forgot he loved, to commune with ghosts of his past. “In your ears there’s Paul Westerberg,” he sings, over moody late-night trip-hop keyboards. “I’m in love with that song.” He sings about the Replacements singing about Alex Chilton, turning it into his own deeply personal meditation on those moments when your pain is so raw, a song buried in your memory can sneak up on you and tell you who you are right now.