The 12 Days of Christmas (And Voting), various artists (Midwestern Music Foundation)

This is a gang of Kansas City, Mo.- area musicians and the organization that promotes them making a Christmas album. They're involved in a charitable competition from microbrewery KC Pils, which has chosen three organizations to support via donation. The wrinkle is that there's an election of sorts, with the top vote-getter of the three charities getting 60 percent of the donation. And now you know what the title's about. An interesting wrinkle of this collection is that it was recorded live over a couple of days in November 2013 and filmed as well, and the production received help from friend of the site Randall Paske, who has pitched in with essential info over the past history of this site. The vast majority of the playlist is covers, but few obvious ones, starting with Sons of Great Dane's cover of the Eels' "Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas," a slower acoustic take on the song. The Kinks' "Father Christmas" is done by Rev Gusto in the normal rocking version, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" gets a more dirge-like arrangement from Not a Planet, The Dead Girls cover Big Star's "Jesus Christ," Grand Marquis take on Louis Prima with "What Will Santa Claus Say When He Finds Everybody Swingin'?" and Rex Hobart and the Honky Tonk Standards do Buck Owens' "Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy." The Grisly Hand's "1,2,3,4 Christmas Time" mashes Mariah Carey and Donny Hathaway, and Donnie's "This Christmas" also gets a jazzy instrumental take from Mark Lowrey and Hermon Mehari. There are three originals here as well, Cadillac Flambe's country ballad "Hear the Bells," The Doo-Dads' 50s-style rocker "Holiday Hop" and Making Movies' Tex-Mex tune "Tormenta." Another one from Bandcamp, where you can sample tunes before grabbing the collection for yourself.