December 2019 Archives

I haven't encountered this New York city band before, but they apparently specialize in 50s-60s nostalgia filtered through new tunes, and this mid-tempo boogie with hints of Elvis and Gene Vincent is pretty darn cool. The singer is alone on Christmas and has nowhere to go except for a Chinese restaurant, one of the few institutions open on the holiday according to modern urban legend. No mention of this being an alleged Jewish tradition, which suits me just fine. Go grab this and its flip side, "White Christmas," from Bandcamp.

Even though the Santastic series of Christmas mash-up collections has officially ended, I occasionally end up at the website to see if anything's new, and it turns out the home page is promoting hip-hoppers Ghost Cave, who have an album out in 2019 plus two Christmas singles, the one in the title plus "We Three Kings" featuring Scott Burland. They're more dolorous synth-pop to my ears than hip-hop, but they're a pair of interesting Christmas noises nonetheless, so check them out.

Yet another case of me being blissfully unaware that this English folksinger has made a second career out of Christmas music, starting with 2008's Sweet Bells, 2011's While Mortals Sleep, 2015's The Frost is All Over, and 2017's Angels and Men. For 2019, we have this, another full album of Christmas-themed music. Her being a folkie, most of these are familiar carols from the ancient repertoire, like "Yorkshire Three Ships," "While Shepherds Watched 6," "Bleak Mid-Winter (Yorkshire)," "Mistletoe Bough," and "Lu Lay (Coventry Carol)." Definitely not a part of the ancient repertoire is "Hippo For Christmas," the Gayla Peevey number that was revived by Dr. Demento, in a gentle arrangement propelled by tuba. She also wrote "The Holly King" and "B.B.B.B.," the latter apparently a continuation of the story of Big Brave Bill, who Kate has sung about on previous occasions. This is a modern pop production of what is essentially folk music, and pretty mellow for all that.

This is the 70s singer-songwriter responsible for the ear-worm "On and On," plus a number of other tunes, some of which were even Oscar-nominated. It's a seven-tune EP featuring two originals, "Jingle Holiday," a kids-party tune, and "Rock Little Reindeer," a more swinging take on the Rudolph story. The rest of the tunes are familiar ones: "Jingle Bell Rock," "Let It Snow," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)," and "Auld Lang Syne." As it happens, this 2019 EP was previously released in 2002 as Happy Bishmas, and since it slipped my notice back then, well, better late than never.

This popular sensation has made Christmas tunes before, although typically low-budget homemade performances like this one. No independent audio, this is just him, some synths and a drum machine.

The once and future Judas Priest singer went solo for Christmas last in 2009, and 10 years later he's back in the saddle, or should we say the sleigh, with this new album featuring four new songs, the portentous title instrumental, the romping "Donner and Blitzen," the midtempo "Morning Star," and the reflective "Protected By the Light." The rest are classic carols like "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "Deck the Halls," "Joy to the World," "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," the lengthy, almost progressive take on "Good King Wenceslaus," and downtempo takes on "Away in a Manger" and "The First Noel." No real surprises here; it's metal, dudes! But Halford's always been a good singer and he brings the bombast to the holiday.

We've had Christmas tunes from Jenny before, and this 2019 entry is an original, a pensive ballad about the failed hopes of the current year and a new hope for the future. Given the message, it's still a pretty warm-sounding record that draws listeners in. Recommended.

Mabel is Neneh Cherry's daughter, and this 2019 single is a very cool midtempo hip-hop pop ballad full of the holiday angst suggested by the title. Unlike a lot of stuff in the genre, this is a solid musical composition with a great melody and could be covered credibly in any number of genres. I could do without the vocoder trills, though, that particular audio fillip is completely played out to my ears.

Solid pop-punk-rock snark with a bad attitude on this 2019 single. These guys previously did "I Won't Be Home For Christmas," but this year's entry by them perfectly captures all the mixed emotions of the season, and if it dwells on the negative, well, it's an honest emotion.

This guy is one of the biggest singing stars in England but he's never been able to carve out that status for himself here in my native USA despite having lived in Los Angeles since 2006. For 2019, he took a cannonball dive into the Christmas market with a two-disc album consisting of a mix of familiar tunes and also some never-before-heard numbers, and he backstopped all that with a liberal seasoning of duets with other famous people like Rod Stewart, Helene  Fischer, Jamie Cullum, Bryan Adams, and Tyson Fury. The double-disc structure is there for a reason; the first disc is entirely composed of Williams doing his Michael Buble impression with cabaret/lounge arrangements of such tunes as "Let it Snow," "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)," "Rudolph," "Winter Wonderland," and some originals like "Coco's Christmas Lullaby," "Let's Not Go Shopping,", and "It's a Wonderful Life." Fischer provides the duet voice on "Santa Baby" so we don't have to be grossed out by a guy singing it solo, and I'm not sure we needed a Nelson Riddle arrangement of Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody." The second disc is more of the contemporary pop-rock that made Williams' career, with a larger selection of non-standard tunes like "Snowflakes," "Time For Change," "Idlewild," "Fairytales" with Stewart (not the Pogues classic), "Bad Sharon," "Happy Birthday Jesus Christ," and "New Year's Day." There's also a duet with Adams on "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," and if you manage to score the bonus tracks, a version of "I Believe in Father Christmas," the faintly ska-ish "Merry Kissmas," and another Stewart duet on the non-holiday "It Takes Two." My feeling is that Williams should have released the two discs in successive years and pitched them to the likely audiences for each.

I was aware of this earlier, but somehow forgot to weigh in on this until now. There's nothing necessarily wrong with these guys having overdubbed themselves over a bonafide Christmas classic so that it sounds 2010s instead of 1970s, but that's really the only thing they've managed to achieve here. If your genre playlist will fail utterly if any part of it sounds like it was made earlier than 2015, knock yourself out.

Back in 2007, this act put out A Neighborly Christmas, a smoothly swingy Americana approach to 11 popular carols in which Drew shared vocals with his wife Ellie. (Including "Baby It's Cold Outside," and I'll spare you any further analysis of that song.) Apparently Ellie doesn't perform with the Neighbors on a regular basis, because part of the promotion for this 2019 EP is that she's back singing with the band. The title song is the familiar classic carol in an arrangement that would fit seamlessly on the previous Christmas album, but it's backstopped by two new originals, "Christmas Style" and "It's Christmas," the latter a mildly snarky poke at the Christmas routine that'll make you smile. Maybe a little mellow for Mistletunes regulars, but the original tunes are worth an audition.

No idea where this particular DJ comes from (check here), but this is a fine mid-tempo hip-hop single featuring female voices, in this case Chelsi Om'nira. I like the "crimson holiday" premise, even if the only connection I can find is a seasonal gift shop in Santa Monica, CA featuring the works of local artisans. Considering the rap portion includes talk of walking around the mall, it appears to be all of a piece. Check this 2019 single out.

We've heard from the Maccabeats before regarding Hanukkah, and this 2018 single of the popular dreidel song is in an arrangement you might hear from Straight No Chaser or Pentatonix. Maybe too pop for some, but it's pretty lively.

Just found out about this Columbus, Ohio band the other day and this new 2019 midtempo holiday ballad they just released. Stereogum calls it "sad and festive," which is not a bad description; indie-rock bands do like to go for the mixed emotion aspect of the holiday. In tracking this down, I found I've been remiss; these guys had The Mallwalker EP in 2016 with five holiday tunes, including "All the Best," a power-poppy holiday missive from the road, "New Coats," a sprawling semi-psychedelic sonic collage, "Plastic Baby Jesus," a pensive electric guitar ballad, the midtempo "On Holiday," and the title track, a Lumineers-like traipse through a shopping center. And in 2017, they offered "The Wandering Star," a folky strum over a drum machine. Please note that proceeds from The Mallwalker benefit the charity Water For People.

This is pretty much self-explanatory, no? A rap battle between Santa and the Grinch. I'm no taste-tipper regarding hip-hop, but I'm pretty sure rap battles went out with the cassette Walkman, so it's a little weird to encounter one in the year 2019. Nevertheless, here it is, and I'm happy to make it available for your holiday entertainment. There's independent audio on Amazon, too.

This British lo-fi power pop ensemble has been with us on the Christmas tip before, and they've conjured up another EP of holiday sounds for 2019. "Headfirst Into Christmas" provides a poppy holiday tableaux, "It's Christmas Time Again" is a rock-ish cover of a bluebeat classic, they take on "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)" as a power pop anthem, and they recorded a new version of their previously released original "Oh Santa Claus!" that's on the most recent Cherryade compilation. Looks like these tunes were also on the Christmas Cards LP mentioned in the first link in this post. Proceeds from this EP benefit the British homelessness charity Shelter. Grab it from Bandcamp.

Mosey is the solo project of Dan Pawlovich, member of Panic! At the Disco and Valencia, and this 2019 single is a cool thrashy holiday protest song about commercialism in the face of world problems. For all the crunchy rock sounds, it has a nice pop sheen over it and you should grab it or playlist it.

Wouldn't be a Christmas season at Mistletunes without another offering from this duo, posted free at their home page for your holiday enjoyment. This one, a decidedly indie-sounding number, is an angular uptempo rocker with a shuffling rhythm and hopeful lyrics. Play it where it lays or download it. As always, the duo's past Christmas tunes are available in the same place.

As the holiday this website celebrates makes its arrival, I'd like to thank all the folks who have stuck with us, especially this year, when technical snafus threatened to kill this website outright. The problems were partly my own fault -- I let the software that runs this website go too long without upgrades, mainly because the original vendor abandoned the hobbyist market and began charging enterprise prices for their goods. Rectifying that cost me a couple weeks of posting time. Then, when I managed to successfully patch things with the last known free version of the software, I discovered my hosting plan only allowed me to write a finite number of files to the server, and I had long exceeded my limit. That cost me another week of posts until customer service simply changed my plan -- and saved me a couple bucks in the process while allowing me to get Mistletunes back on the information superhighway once more.

I'm starting to feel age creeping up on me, mainly in regard to what seems like the ebbing relevance of what I once considered to be a great idea for an underserved market -- rock 'n roll Christmas music reviews. Hell, I'm still making a physical disc of my annual Christmas mix, even as fewer people have CD players in their homes or cars. But then, I'm still listening to rock 'n roll, even as those of us who still do that are regarded by our younger peers the same way we once regarded our weird uncles with their Sauter-Finnegan records.

So while I doubt the original premise of this website would pass muster with your average focus group as a good idea, or even a comprehensible one, I'm going to keep doing it for the foreseeable future, if only to justify the amount of time I spent on hold with technical support in the past two months. If you still find this site provides you with value, please do me the small favor of routing your Amazon orders through this website. (I'll be replacing the more prominent Amazon links, and maybe even the original website banner, once I figure out what I'm doing again; webmastering skills really don't stay with a guy if you're not building new sites from scratch three or four times a year.)

In the meantime, please enjoy this bit of mash-up holiday weirdness, have a happy holiday, and don't be a stranger.

These guys were a band in the 90s, then they broke up, and then the two main guys got back together as an acoustic duo. For 2019 they popped out this Christmas EP featuring "Flying For Christmas," which their Instagram post states is a rewrite of Cake's "The Distance," and it's a fairly sharp little talk-sing number. That was the most information I could get about the EP, and from listening I'm going to assume that "All the Gifts I Need," "Twinkle Little Christmas Lights" and "My Favorite Time of Year" are originals, while "Christmas All Over Again" is a Tom Petty cover. This is solid pop-rock and should grab some attention for your playlists.

Bryan had a single of "Christmas Time" and "Reggae Christmas" back in 1985, and you may recall that the latter tune had an MTV video featuring all of MTV's original veejays prancing around in Santa hats around that time. Those two songs are here on this 2019 EP, along with another original of the same vintage, "Merry Christmas," and what appear to be new songs, the cheeky original "Joe and Mary" and a cover of "Must Be Santa." I have always liked "Reggae Christmas" and I'm adding "Joe and Mary" to the list too. The rest are good but less essential.

The Double Crown record label is a small indie that's dedicated to surf music and guitar instrumentals in the vein of the Ventures, they've been around for almost two decades, and they've got an intermittent tradition of compiling albums of Christmas music in their specialized genres, this one being the 2019 edition of the series. As it's a compilation, you may find you've run into one or another of these tunes before, and in this case Double Crown borrowed a bit from the Western Star compilation of a couple of years ago. That accounts for "Cadillac Under My Christmas Tree" by the Bad Detectives," "Santa Was a Rockin'" by the Elfish Presleys (great name, btw), and "Christmas in December" by the Pat Winn Combo. We've covered "Santa! I Know Him!" by the Supraphonics here before as well. That leaves us with Frankie & the Pool Boys' vocal rendition of the Ramones' "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)," the Hang-Ten Hangmen's "Christmas Boogaloo" and the Doltones' "Twistin' Reindeer," both punchy and hooky uptempo melodies, the Razorblades' rendition of "Frohliche Weihnachten Uberall," what I'm assuming is a traditional German number, The Ogres' original vocal "Santa's Got It In For Me,"  and Cannibal Mosquitos' "Go! Go! Go! Jingle Bells," a frantic cross between "Blitzkrieg Bop" and the traditional carol. Black Flamingos add a bit of 60s pop movie soundtrack to the mix with their instrumental "A Hint of Nutmeg," Blackball Bandits throw a tiny bit of bluebeat into their "Yuletide Ride," The Incredible Mr. Smith give us an instrumental of the Slade classic "Merry Xmas Everybody," Los Venturas offer "The Balls of Saint Rudolph," no clues as to the derivation from the song, and "Ne Tennes Tusen Julelys" by the Twang-O-Matics. Wrapping things up are "Let's Throw Presents and Burn the Christmas Tree" by Mr. Smith and the Jazz Police, a more sedate number than the title suggests, and the self-explanatory "Auld Lang Surf" by MFC Chicken. If you haven't compiled a bunch of these tunes on your own already like I have, you'll find a lot to enjoy here. Only available via CD ordered directly from the mothership.

I have no idea who "116" is, let alone any of the folks who are co-billed on this 2019 holiday hip-hop recording. But I wanted to make sure folks got to hear this because it's very listenable. Four of the 12 songs appear to be original to this project, "Thanking You," "All Is Bright," "Nothin' But You," and "Real Love." All of these are mid-tempo or slower modern R'nB. The rest of the tunes are all remakes-remodels of familiar carols, some with tweaked titles, like "O'Come," ""Joy," "What a Time," "Noel," and "Angels." The other songs are "Silent Night, "This Christmas," and "We Three Kings." Those of you who hold hip-hop at arm's length would do well to give this a chance.

Samantha Fish is a blues performer, but knowing that about her, this 2019 holiday single of hers may come as a surprise. Particularly the very interesting minor-key arrangement of "Run Run Rudolph," which really puts a familiar song in a whole new light. The B-side, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," is a faithful cover of the Darlene Love signature tune, but it's "Rudolph" you really want.

We had Volume 2 last year and this Nashville music collective is back for 2019 with a third volume sampling the region's indie rockers performing mostly new original songs. Kicking off with a solid rocker "New Xmas" by Carver Commodore, the collection also features Glamper with their early Cure-sounding ode to the "Elf on the Shelf," Jibber Jabber's uptempo "Tis the Season to be Glum," and Jingle Bell Hotel's grungy mid-tempo treatment of "Silent Night." Rock Eupora offers the mid-tempo "All I Want For Christmas is Boo," Voltagehawk chimes in with an indie take on the similarly titled Mariah Carey classic, Lawndry breaks out the synths for the semi-chill sounding "Merry Merry," Little Ghost gets folky with their electric instruments on the ballad "Mother Warned You," and Pet Envy goes poppy with their rock on "Christmas Forever." Skyler House puts a doomy rock backing to "Retail Christmas," Spoken Nerd goes all dramatic on the story of "Krampus (The Dark Side of St. Nicholas)," the Underhill Family Orchestra misses a special someone on "Christmas Day," the New 100's, Tiblinski, and Peyton Rodeffer combine to celebrate "Christmas Eve at Applebee's," and Lucky Halfspeed goes all "Weekend at Bernie's" on "I Think We Killed Santa" (spoiler alert: they didn't). This is a fine grouping of indie rock performances with very little in the way of country/Americana influences considering it's from Nashville. Grab it from Amazon; you can find it at Bandcamp as well.

Last year, we glommed onto these guys from Philadelphia who have been creating fun parody records for Christmas annually, and this is their 2019 edition. This time around they incorporate the comedy sketch bits more closely with the songs, and I'm liking this year's collection a lot. Only seven songs, but they're all winners. "San Ta!" is a takeoff on Outkast's "Hey Ya!," "Why Don't We Just Use Rudolph's Nose" is an elaborate sketch used to set off a parody of the Beatles' "Why Don't We Do It In the Road," "Mr. Bezos" pokes at online Christmas shopping to the tune of "Please Mr. Postman," "Christmas Is Expensive" tinsels up the "M*A*S*H" theme, another sketch prefaces a holiday version of "Suzie Q," "Red Dressed Man" takes off from the ZZ Top song "Sharp Dressed Man," and the closer is a medley of two Band songs parodied thusly: "The Wait/Up On Christmas Eve." They always drop these collections with minutes to go before Christmas, but if you're just planning your Christmas mixes you might still have time to include these. Hie thee onward to Bandcamp for your copy.

• Back in 2013, Dr. Dog dropped a Christmas EP, Oh My Christmas Tree, and this year they added four more songs to make it a full album, but the only way you could get it to date was to order it from Press On Records by December 20. Oh, and it's a cassette. They promise a digital release is forthcoming, but it's not showing anywhere at this writing.
• And my annual gift to the readership, the Mistletunes mix, can be perused by linking here. When you click through, you'll find a Spotify playlist, minus three tunes because Spotify can't have everything.
• Speaking of playlists, Paste Magazine has a free one in conjunction with its recent merger partner Noisetrade.

I almost forgot this came out, and probably I blanked on it because this 2019 release is the classic rock-era band's fourth Christmas album. (Or maybe not, see link.) One might wonder just how much the band has to offer on the subject to justify this many albums, but give 'em credit; three brand-new originals written for the album appear here, the 70s-soulful "All Over the World," the similarly performed "(Because) It's Christmastime," and the funky "I'm Your Santa Claus." Sharp-eared listeners will immediately peg this as Chicago music. There's also the uptempo original "Bring My Baby Back," the almost slow-jam-sounding "I'd Do It All Again (Christmas Moon)," and two versions of another original, "Merry Christmas, I Love You," rendered as an uptempo soul number and as a straight ballad. "All Is Right" is another party tune, "Sleigh Ride 2019" is Chicago's second version of the classic carol, "Here We Come a-Caroling" gets a merengue treatment, and they add the non-holiday "What the World Needs Now Is Love," the Bacharach-David classic that the album's press release states "had a timely message for the holidays." I'll give them that one. All told, this probably belongs on the yacht-rock side of the music ledger, but it's not hard to listen to -- unless your brother-in-law just made you sit through the other Chicago Christmas albums, anyway.

You'd be excused for not knowing that this former "Saturday Night Live" cast member has, since leaving the show, carved out a sideline of being a cabaret singer. But you might have gotten an inkling since she was unmasked recently on "The Masked Singer." And this would not normally be something that would make this site, but there's enough humor on this 2019 release to count it as a novelty record. For example, the American songbook not-but-should-be comedy classic "He's Stuck in the Chimney Again," and an original tune "Secret Santa" featuring another former SNL-er Maya Rudolph, filled with personality and Latin percussion. The title tune is a sprightly little novelty as well. The rest is mostly Christmas cabaret-style with traditional carols, but in this age of streaming and single downloads I figured some of you would be open to some pace-changers in your playlists.

This Minneapolis duo offers us an 80s-90s style midtempo rocker for 2019 about mixed feelings on the holiday, about observing the season's joy and celebration but not feeling part of it while desperately wanting to. The cover art presumptuously calls the song a "new Christmas classic," and while it's up to the listenership to make that determination, the song definitely deserves that status.

The popular hip-hop star just dropped this single for 2019, and it's pretty cool to these jaded old rock 'n roll ears. No big surprises content-wise, just an upbeat rhyming tribute to holiday anticipation that won't frighten the horses. It's pretty hooky too, definitely radio-friendly.

Once upon a time, there was such a thing as regional hits -- songs that swept certain cities and went completely unnoticed elsewhere. Not surprisingly, some of them were written to the market in which they originated, as is the case with this 2019 tune by this Pittsburgh aggregation of artists. It's crammed full of local landmarks and vocal tics, known to the cognoscenti as "Pittsburgh-ese," and the title flags the colors of the city's pro sports teams, all in service of telling a holiday story with the help of some of the city's better-known performers, such as Liz Berlin from Rusted Root. It comes with an animated video and sales of related swag will benefit the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. Most importantly, it's pretty listenable for its own sake, although I will admit to having the Pittsburgh connection that helps me get all the references. Check it out and see if you agree.

This has actually been around since 1999 but I just saw it for the first time this year. With the "final" Star Wars movie premiering this week, it seems like a good time to run it here.

This up-and-coming family harmony group has dropped a two-song single for 2019, in what seems to be a growing trend of giving unique titles to releases consisting of exactly two songs. Theoretically the A-side appears to be "I'll Be Home For Christmas," a mellow ballad treatment of this longtime favorite, but the side that is attracting all the attention is their cover of the "Love, Actually" staple "Christmas Is All Around," which they do in their own inimitable style that sounds closer to the Troggs song this is derived from than the bombastic original. I like this and I think you will too.

These very basic Philly indie-rockers bashed out this grungy little holiday rocker for 2019. The lyrics depict a downbeat and depressed narrator whose holiday high point is that case of beer he just dragged home. Unclear if Brett Kavenaugh wrote this tune, I'll assume not. It's a name-your-price single on Bandcamp, so check it out.

V.D., best known for his work with Jersey roots-rockers Better Off Dead, has been dropping fresh new rock 'n roll Christmas tunes every year via YouTube. This 2019 entry is solidly in the tradition, nicely upbeat, and as the first few frames of this video suggest, he was going for an AC/DC vibe, and I think he's got it.

Prog-rock performer Morse, once of the band Spock's Beard and now of his own eponymous band, strips off the progressive filligree in favor of solid riff-rock with a rap interlude on this 2019 holiday single. He's trying to summon Santa for a December 24 Uber ride on the sleigh, and he's largely successful. Those of you who run screaming from prog need not dodge this one; it's refreshingly straightforward and hooky. I like it. There's no Amazon link, it's apparently only available from Neal's website. While there, Neal apparently teamed with the City On a Hill worship band for a 14-cut Christmas album, all covers, and that too is only available on the site.

Jon's an actor and a singer-songwriter, and this 2019 tune plays off his most recent album, Welcome To the Edge Times. This holiday song is a ballad with the usual verities about coming together for the holidays, hold off on the commercialism, and spread love to everybody, and the title was constructed in a way that some folks are taking as a tribute to the John and Yoko classic. If you need a pace-changer in your playlist, check it out.

• Pomplamoose created a collection called Winter Songs, but we missed the window by which you had to click through and join their Patreon list to get it. Apparently it was a CD, as they mentioned mailing it to people.
• Christian rockers Emery have an EP called Cocoa and Christmas, but you can only get it by joining their affinity program.
• Sam Phillips had an EP called Cold Dark Nights a decade ago; this year she remixed and remodeled the songs and added four songs to turn it into an album available only through her website, with $1 from the sale benefitting the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental charity.
• Sleeping At Last, which has maintained a fearsome pace of creating new Christmas songs every year, has recorded "Christmastime Is Here" and "Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep" for 2019.
• Nicholas Burgess did Xmas Gold in 2018, and this year he's got an EP, Nuggets of Xmas Gold, with three of the songs from that collection that were recorded during rehearsals for a live performance. They're very different sounding, so check 'em out on Bandcamp.

This New Jersey indie label has provided us with two previous volumes of sharp power pop holiday recordings, and they're back for 2019 with a new collection. It's only available on CD, there's no download or other format available at this writing. As I mentioned earlier, the Athanor single "I Remember You on Christmas" was compiled here, along with Everet Almond's "Have a Very Very Very Merry Christmas," a sharp Spector/Beach Boys homage, the Decibels' 60s-style "Christmas Wish," The Junior League's ballad "Holiday Bouquet," The Season's Greeters' bluesy "Santa's Leaving Town," and Nick Frater's more 70s-sounding "Christmas Is Cancelled." Richard Turgeon insists he's "Skippin' Christmas" and running off to California in a nice mid-tempo strut, the Stan Laurels give us "Noche Buena," but don't worry, it's all in English, and Stephen's Ruin ramps up the garage band organ on "A Child's Christmas." Emperor Penguin goes all "Rocky Raccoon" on us with their faux-Western "Lonesome Cowboy Christmas," Tommy and the Rockets perform the uptempo "December Snow," Ed Ryan cranks up the intensity even more with "Noel (You've Gotta Sing)," and Steve Somerset's Shadow Kabinet takes the collection out on a down note with "Compliments of the Season," a folk-rock holiday protest song with a few currently timely references, and I think you know what I mean by that. Yet another fine collection of a currently neglected style of rock 'n roll music. Note that $5 of every sale goes to the American Cancer Society. UPDATE: Stubby, and commenter Rich Woods, both rushed to the intertubes to tell me that Futureman Records has the download for this album over at Bandcamp. Also, though I tend to favor Amazon links where possible due to the few pennies they throw at this website, it's only fair to let you know that you can get the CD from Kool Kat's own website.

The '90s Massachusetts band that did Aurora Gory Alice and placed some well-crafted covers on the soundtrack of "10 Things I Hate About You" reformed a few years ago, and now for 2019 they dipped their toe in the Christmas market with this EP featuring a sharp original, "Miss You This Christmas," and covers of the Kinks' "Father Christmas," Elvis Presley's "If I Get Home On Christmas Time" in an almost, for them, Americana arrangement, and "Xmas Time (It Sure Don't Feel Like)," previously done by the Dogmatics and Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Solidly upbeat all the way through, this will brighten up your playlists for sure; feel free to use the whole thing.

Interesting choice for a 2019 single, and then I listen to it and it's being sung in a foreign language, possibly French but the vocals are mixed low so I can't be sure. The fact that there's almost no biographical information at her label or anywhere else makes it even more difficult to wrap my mind around it. It's kind of a French ye-ye sound, if that helps you decide whether you should dig into it. In the course of my research I discovered two more Pink Velvet Christmas singles released in 2019, "Jingle Bells," which definitely sounds French, and "Silent Night," a little more uptempo than normally rendered, and still not in English. If you're looking for something to break up a playlist, these will work nicely.

Valerie is a made-for-Americana-radio artist who can perform credibly whether the band's playing country, folk, roots, blues, or rock 'n roll. For this 2019 single, she sings bluesy but the band veers a bit more country on this well-realized cover of the classic carol. Check her out.

This Northwest indie record label unveils its 10th Christmas label compilation for 2019, and they've even backstopped it with another collection that collects the best tracks from the previous nine compilations. Like the previous nine, the new one paints a holiday mood from a wide variety of styles, though mostly in the rock 'n roll realm. Things kick off promisingly with Ben London's "Vinyl Christmas," a rollicking boogie shuffle about record fans' holiday wishes, and Duane Hibbard cues up a pretty faithful cover of "Wonderful Christmastime." Cabeza takes a 70s hard rock turn on "It's a Hard Time," Jon Davis takes a few cues from "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the trippy "Psychedelic Christmas," Levi Fuller goes folk-rock on the anti-consumer "Enough Stuff," Olivia Bloch offers a nicely poppy "I'm Going Back Home For Christmastime," and label honcho Tom Dyer combines with Joe Cason for the quirky "The Geese." Richard Stuverud offers "Snowing In Frisco" as a Part One-Part Two in the fashion of those extra-long songs cut to fit on vinyl singles going back to "What'd I Say." In this case Part One is a dolorous piano ballad and Part Two is an upbeat rocker. Steve Fisk breaks out his Pro Tools setup to do a hip-hop deconstruction of "The Little Drummer Boy," and Rendition stumps my high school Latin with the folky-classical "Verbum Caro Factum Est" (The Word Made Flesh), which as it turns out actually is an antique carol; I learn something new every day. The Elftones perform a midtempo rocker called "Christmas Without You," Utterance Tongue goes long with "Cheznuts," a semi-industrial sounding instrumental based on "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)," and Wendi Dunlap goes power pop on "Christmas Eve." Ed Portnow and Jeff Kelly do "Baby It's Cold Outside," yeah it's two guys, not that there's anything wrong with that, and Jim of Seattle, who previously offered humorous novelties in previous volumes of this series, plays it straight with a jazz piano solo version of "Silent Night" that sneaks in a phrase or two of "Christmastime Is Here." The collection wraps up with "The Brand New Christmas," a funky rocker by Who's This Mystery Band? They're serious -- the label doesn't know who submitted this tape that has been laying around the office for a few years.

Originally from Atlanta and now from Los Angeles, this singer-songwriter mixes a pop vocal with a slow-jam synth-R'nB backing for a downbeat lyric about grief and loss on the holidays. No relation to the similarly-named Led Zeppelin song, classic rock fans. This 2019 original is a hit-radio-ready holiday number.

Big Stir has been busy this season, with two singles previously mentioned here and this further collection of eight songs (short LP or long EP? Definitions, folks!). Great rock-power pop is on offer here, starting with Anton Barbeau's "Xmas Song," a holiday jangle-pop anthem, and going on with San Francisco's The Bobbleheads performing the catchy "Groovy Time of Year," Dolph Chaney remaking a downbeat original of his called "Christmas," Kai Danzberg and Scott McPherson teaming on an almost Bay City Rollers-esque "The Day Before Christmas," and The Decibels mash up "Angels We Have Heard On High" with "Gloria," something that was done in the 80s by the Tryfles on A Midnight Christmas Mess. Nevertheless, it's too good an idea not to resurrect now and then. The Forty Nineteens conjure up an echo of Roy Wood in their song "It's Christmas Time Again," Alison Faith Levy brings us a Hanukkah Alert on the folky "All I Want for Chanukah is a Ukelele," and former Soft Boy/Katrina and the Waves songwriter Kimberley Rew teams with Lee Cave-Berry on the 70s pop-rocker "All I Want Is You For Christmas." As with the other releases, you have to go to Big Stir itself to get this, and you should, especially if power pop is your jam.

Mistletunes visitors will recognize these guys immediately if they've developed a taste for the numerous holiday recordings we've featured from That Band From Holland. This is the same guys under a new monicker, and this is their 2019 offering. "Nailed to the Ground" is a snowman commenting on his impending demise, "Simon Norman" is a misanthrope who puts stones inside snowballs, and "Ne Quitte Pas" is in Dutch, so I'm out of luck telling you much more. All three songs are the kind of indie-chamber-pop these guys have been putting out for the past decade or so, and if that's your kind of thing you can get it from Bandcamp.

These guys have been knocking around the Chicago rock scene since the 1970s and have recently had some of their old music reissued. For 2019 they banged out this two-sided single, the A-side being a nice 60s pop-rocker with saxophone and the B-side, "Approximately Eternity," more of the same, although there's not much holiday content in the lyrics to that one. Snappy stuff, check it out. No Amazon links, you'll have to go to Big Stir for it -- or wait for A Kool Kat Kristmas Vol. 3, about which more later.

Saw Black is a Richmond, Va. singer-songwriter with a couple of albums under his belt, and for 2019 he decided to enter the Christmas music arena with this album of original tunes, created with the help of co-writers Andrew Murray and Pete Curry, that explore the contrast between holiday cheer and the isolation that many people experience at this time of year. The title song is an example of that feeling, "Christmas in San Francisco" laments a cold season without snow, "Once a Year" is rendered in the chorus as "I'm glad Christmas only comes once a year," bracketed by snarky anecdotes, and "Mini-Bike" is a steel guitar-led instrumental. "Ol' Saint Nick" is a ballad about being alone on Christmas Eve, "Christmas Dream" is about still believing in Santa Claus, "Ur Parents' Haus" is a humorous, countrified look at holiday sleeping arrangements, "I Know What I Want" is a rockabilly/doo-wop blend about Christmas gifts, and things wrap up with a rare look at "Boxing Day." There are short snippets of some popular carols like "Silent Night," "Joy To the World," and "Auld Lang Syne" mixed in as well. The approach is Americana, and nearly all the performances are gentle and mellow, which counts against it in the Mistletunes mission statement, but it's worth your while to seek this out for the strong original songs.

I never heard of these guys until now. Press materials state these guys are originally from Ohio but now live in the Alps, and their second album, released for 2019, is all Christmas rock 'n roll all the time. This is the kind of stuff that inspired the creation of this website; driving rock 'n roll music with snarky lyrics ("CVS is out of mistletoe") that nevertheless celebrate the holiday. Looks like most of these songs are original, even "Santa Baby," although they cover Darlene Love's "All Alone on Christmas" with guest vocalist Lucy Spazzy (really!). They bust out of the gates with the instrumental "Ghost of Christmas Past," which borrows liberally from "Wipe Out," and bookend that with "Ghost of Christmas Present," with touches of "Is That You Santa Claus," and then "Ghost of Christmas Future," which borrows from the first one and adds a bit of "Sleigh Ride." There's also the uptempo "Christmas in Hawaii," the mid-tempo "Lonely," in which the singer is left with his John Cougar records, the solid boogie "Holiday Without You," the exuberant "Number One on My List," title song "It's Christmas Somewhere," the answer song "I'm Not Coming Home For Christmas," in which the singer dubs "Jingle All the Way" as the greatest Christmas movie, Rotten Tomatoes be damned, and "Mistletoe" wraps up with a gentle rendition of the Bo Diddley beat backing a plea to meet under the iconic plant. This is definitely a Mistletunes pick for this season.

Jonathan's a comparatively young power popper -- a lot of those guys are my age and older -- and for 2019 he's gone to the Beach Boys repertoire for their best-known holiday tune. It's a faithful cover, maybe too faithful, but that's up to you; I like it fine.

Indie label Cleopatra previously gave us Volume 1 in the series, along with a number of other holiday-oriented releases, and for 2019 they give us this epic sequel to the original, likely to be double discs both on CD and vinyl. I have to admit I'm not familiar with the majority of band names represented here, but I recognize some of them. From the original punk era, The Members lay a driving beat under John & Yoko's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," the Vibrators chronicle the sad tale "Santa Had to Go Into Rehab," Reagan Youth give us the nominal title tune "Punk Rock Christmas" as a shambling folk-rock shuffle, and original New York Doll Johnny Thunders contributes a live, and rather tuneless, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" from back in the day (since he's no longer with us). Tsunami Bomb kicks things off with a thrashy "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," Pulley takes the same tack on an even faster-tempoed "O Holy Night," Parasites do the Kinks' "Father Christmas," Punchline punks up "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," Slap of Reality does the same to "Last Christmas," Down and Outs speed up Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody," and Chief State fakes us out with a mock-sincere "All I Want For Christmas Is You" that breaks into a punked-up arrangement halfway through, and the Widows hammer "Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk This Christmas." Some original takes on the holiday include Ship Thieves' "Who Put the Gum in Santa's Whiskers," M.D.C.'s "(Merry Christmas) World's On Fire," Naked Aggression's "What We Buy," Down By Law's "Merry Christmas (Feels So Right)," Bankrupt's "When Johhny Saved Christmas," Unsteady Heights' "Around Christmas," The Spears' "Christmas Sucks (I'll spare you the subtitle)," Splinter's "Fairy Tales," and The Queers' "Ramones Christmas." For you "Fairytale in New York" fans, The Rumjacks take a crack at a similar sort of Celtic-punk performance with "Christmas in Killarney." An outlier on this collection is "Merry Christmas Happy Holiday" by Amber Pacific, which is a front-porch acoustic shuffle full of good cheer. I'd wonder whether 26 tunes is a lot for a punk-rock collection, but just about all of these performances are worthy of being showcased, so dig in.

This group is the work of Joe Algieri, a power pop legend from Down Under, who has been posting his music to Bandcamp for years. Among those many postings have been a number of Christmas tunes, and this 2019 offering is his latest. It's a bright midtempo number with all those British Invasion touches amped up a few decibels, with seriously downtempo lyrics about a dying relationship at holiday time. Best of all, it's free from Bandcamp -- one click and it's yours.

The venerable Americana label marshaled artists from its roster for this 2019 album (eight songs, either a short LP or a long EP). The Lone Bellow opens the album with a rootsy take on "Marshmallow World," Delta Spirit goes power pop on "Santa Claus is Coming To Town," Langhorne Slim's "Deck the Halls" is the same garage-rock cover that was previously offered on an Amazon download collection, and Wild Child do "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as a folky strum. There are some originals here too, led by one of the first new tunes by Kathleen Edwards in several years, the topical, warm and slightly snarky "It's Christmastime (Let's Just Survive)," Mt. Joy's folky ballad "Every Holiday," Ivan & Alyosha's "Being Home For Christmas," which threads the needle between roots music and Phil Spector, and Amos Lee's acoustic guitar holler "Holiday Song." You don't have to be a roots purist to like this, so check it out.

You could go blind searching out on Mistletunes the numerous references to Sofia's Christmas repertoire, which is almost as big as her regular 364-day repertoire. Over time, she's evolved from an artist whose work was similar to such diva songwriter-performers as Kate Bush and Tori Amos to a more Americana-sounding ethos. This new song for 2019 is a rockabilly-country sounding thing melding the holiday to the many epic railroad songs of the past. There are any number of country artists you could imagine performing this. Although I'm not big on country, I'm carving out an exception for this one.

Singer-songwriter Beccs, who I'm guessing is currently from Brooklyn, offers for 2019 a warm ballad for piano and strings about reaching out to a friend for love during the holiday. The accompanying video shows two women, but listening to the song without the visuals, it could be for anyone to anyone. This deserves much wider exposure than it's likely to get; hopefully we can be of help here. Out December 10.

The Northwest's biggest conventional rock group just dropped this cover of their hometown heros The Sonics' best known Christmas song for 2019 2002, and it has all the rambunctiousness of the original. I like it and it needs to be in your playlists and mixes as soon as possible. Note that it's from the legendary album Merry Christmas From the Sonics, the Wailers and the Galaxies, which despite its age and general obscurity outside this site remains available as a download from Amazon. UPDATE: I actually did know that Pearl Jam used to release Chrismas songs to their fan club and that this was one of them, but it took Stubby to gently remind me via email of that fact. What happened is that Pearl Jam has dropped ALL that stuff this year for general consumption, holiday and non-holiday alike, which means everybody can now get their hands on this as well as "Someday At Christmas" (2004), "Santa God"/"Jingle Bells" (2007) and "Let Me Sleep (It's Christmas Time)" (1991). That latter song had been on a rarities compilation before this.

We've had this group in the past doing holiday parodies of Beatles songs, as well as the one actual Beatles Christmas song. For 2019, they've decided to give us a new original holiday song. The Beatles influence, however, remains strong. You could pass this off as a new Beatles song if you felt like embarrassing a few millennials, but I'm sure nobody will spoil this fine song with a bad prank like this.

And while I'm doing my country/not country mea culpas, Kacey Musgraves is someone I've kept my distance from on country grounds, but her 2019 Netflix special (and this soundtrack) hipped me to her crossover appeal, and reminded me that she doesn't get much love from country radio, or should I say bro-country radio. A lot of show-biz schmaltz, for sure, which always happens when TV's involved, but you need to hear her duet with Leon Bridges on "Present Without a Bow," and there's a fairly reasonable duet with Camilla Cabello on "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," and another one with Lana Del Rey on "I'll Be Home For Christmas." Plus there's one new number, "Glittery," duetted with Troye Sivan, a solid ballad whose steel guitar is the only country touch on it. A fair amount of this special was derived from Kacey's 2016 album A Very Kacey Christmas, which in retrospect has not got much country in it, so if you haven't heard that for yourself, consider this a Mistletunes tip.

Not that the arguably biggest musical artist of our time needs any help from this humble website, but this new-for-2019 holiday tune is great radio fare with a reasonably substantial love-song-for-the-holiday lyric set in the seldom-invoked cultural institution that is the Christmas tree farm. And musically, plenty of hooks and big-show production that takes us back to the 60s, or at least those of us who remember that far back, anyway. Speaking of remembering, she had an EP of holiday tunes in 2007 that I blew off at the time because she was a country artist then, but her "Last Christmas" is more pop, and she had two originals, "Christmas Must Be Something More" and "Christmases When You Were Mine."

South Carolina singer-songwriter Edwin came to prominence in the 1990s with "I'll Be" and "I Could Not Ask For More." For 2019, he dropped this "surprise" album, according to the press release. (Strangely, no Amazon link at this time.) Don't be fooled by him getting his start in the 90s; this is solid 60s-70s R'nB done with his regular band, augmented by Ivan Neville on keyboards. Edwin's guitarist Larry Chaney provides the only original here, "Christmas Cheer," a downbeat ballad about the relative lack of same. The other 10 songs are familiar, starting with the often-covered Charles Brown number that serves as the title song here, and going on to include "Christmas in New Orleans," plus versions of "Jingle Bells" and "Jingle Bell Rock" that are infused with that city's musical readymades. "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)" and "Silent Night" are more folky renditions of those songs, and the remainder of the songs -- "Winter Wonderland," "Frosty the Snowman," "Silver Bells," and "Mele Kalikimaka" are solidly upbeat. Not a particularly groundbreaking collection, but it's eminently listenable. Can't leave this behind without mentioning Edwin's previous Christmas song, not included here, "Christmas Chihuahua," a 2016 single in which the singer sings to a child about giving Santa a pet. It has more of a novelty ring to it, which I imagine is why it didn't make the cut this year.

This Christian band previously had a Christmas collection, and for 2019 they've rolled out this EP to coincide with their winter tour. Like their previous efforts, this is mainstream rock influenced by the biggest contemporary bands out there. The title song is a pensive original, as is the Coldplay-influenced "It Doesn't Feel Like Christmas," and the rest are familiar tunes like a U2-ized "Little Drummer Boy," a vocoder-infused harmony-sung version of "O Holy Night," a syncopated "Emmanuel," and an interestingly rearranged version of "Go Tell It on the Mountain" that remains gospel but stands out among other versions of this song. This is some solid, radio-friendly holiday rock music here.

From Houston via England and West Africa, this 2019 single by Myoa is a really nice hip-hop holiday number with her sweet vocals and a bit of rapping from guest Rukus. It's a typical longing for love lyric, but then Rukus interjects a bit of the holiday's darker side before turning toward a hopeful outcome. Check it out.

Amazing to me that this song has managed to become a Christmas classic, and I sincerely hope this website had at least a little to do with that. The fact that it has appeal across the rock, pop, and Celtic music fields certainly helps with that. There have been a few punk-rock versions over time, and the Dollyrots have now tried their hand with their own such version for 2019. As has been their custom, it's a free download from Bandcamp, costing you only an email address. I can imagine many fans of the original song not being too fond of this, but the band is great and the performance is peppy.

The email was terse: "Hi Rudolph I'm a musician from Ireland playing indie rock May I submit the track for consideration?" Hell yeah. Especially since this is an enjoyable 80s-90s alt-rock sound in which the singer hopes for season-appropriate precipitation and a sweetheart to share it with. The scratchy opening that sounds like an old transistor radio is a nice touch, too. Locklin is Barry McLoughlin's dba name, and the song appears to have been done in 2018. It's available only on Google Play if you're interested.

We've had several holiday entries from this artist in the past, running the gamut from home studio tinkering to a live album recorded in Austin, Texas. For 2019 it's back into the studio with this collection of new original indie tunes, starting with "Tastes Like Xmas," composed of equal parts synths and toy instruments. "A Christmas Wish (Peace and Freedom)" is mostly instrumental but samples John and Yoko repeating variations of the title, "Realness for Xmas" is another crunchy instrumental, and "Must Be Xmas" is a primitive folk song that might remind one of Daniel Johnston. Other tunes include the instrumentals "Jolly Jolly," "Holiday Guitar Piece 2015," "King Moonracer," and "Santa Is Almost Here." This is quirky stuff that might not remind you of the holidays, but you may find some of these tunes work as pace-changers in your playlists. It's only $1 on Bandcamp, and the artist is offering a "digital discography" for $7 that wraps up their full holiday repertoire for download.

The keyboardist for 80s MTV superstars a-ha has been spending his years out of the musical limelight as a visual artist, but he's back by himself in 2019 with a concept album about the darker side of Christmas. The quote from him in British website iNews goes like this: "I am ashamed to be a part of a Christmas which these days seems to be mostly about buying more and more shit that no one needs or even really wants ... a tacky superficial celebration in stark contrast to the original Christmas message of hope, charity and compassion." Musically, there aren't many surprises; you might not say "a-ha" upon hearing these songs, but there's lots of 80s synth-pop here, leavened by folky touches and a variety of tempos. Song titles drive home Furuholmen's themes, starting with the title track and moving on through "There Goes Another Year," "The Light We Lost," "A Punch-Up On Boxing Day," "The Season To Be Melancholy," "So Cold It's Hard To Think," "Snow Is Falling," "A Wintry Silence" and so on. You may have heard he did a protest song, "This Is Now America," earlier in the year, and though it's not about Christmas, it's here too. I don't know that anybody will love this album unconditionally, but it's quite listenable for what it is, and there are a fair number of candidates for your mixes here. At Mistletunes, we've often provided equal time for Scrooges, and it's hard to argue that Furuholmen doesn't have a reasonable complaint to offer.

I haven't heard of Monica before, but don't let the title fool you into thinking there's some hip-hop element to it; this is straight-up 70s Top 40 radio fare with a few modern touches. It's a love song and the significant other is the "bling" in the title. As a lot of indie rockers have been mining the 70s pop groove for new ideas lately -- not to mention Bruce Springsteen -- this 2019 song may have come along at just the right moment. Covers of "Let It Snow" and "Winter Wonderland" round out this EP; click here to get it.

You know him from the Band, and he's spent most of his time since then scoring movies, although he's sneaked in the occasional solo album. For 2019 he offers this downtempo yet gently sarcastic ode to the various holidays we celebrate this time of year. If you're familiar with Robbie's past work, there's no surprises, and this is as close as we get to a sequel to the Band's "Christmas Must Be Tonight." I've embedded the video because, though this was supposedly released in the past two weeks, it's not showing up for sale anywhere at this time. UPDATE: Here's the Amazon link.

For those of you not in the know, this is Norah Jones, Sasha Dobson and Catherine Popper performing as what folks are calling an "alt-country" band. They had an album a few years back and have come back with this EP for 2019. All three wrote the opening ballad "Christmas All Over Again," Dobson teamed with Don Was for "The Great Romancer (Brooklyn)," a grungy little number, Popper penned the ribald shuffler "Christmas Butt," the group performs Sarah Oda's waltz "It's Not Christmas Till You Come Home," and they wrap up with a live version of "Silent Night." I'm not a fan of country, but since there's no danger of this ever being played on country radio, I'm happy to plug this, which is far more Americana in thrust.

2019 brings us the third edition of this holiday music collection featuring artists associated with the Brushfire Records label. The genre label on the downloads is "Singer/Songwriter," and that's a solid description of what's on offer here. Jack Johnson offers his originals "I Can't Go To Sleep" and "New Axe" (that's a hatchet, not a guitar), performed in his signature style, G. Love brings us two originals, the lilting "Christmas Wave" and the not-incorrectly-titled "New Years Blues," Mason Jennings also brings two originals, "Little Child on Christmas" and, in a duet with Johnson, "Buddha Too." ALO brings us the funky "Winter Time (Be a Little Closer)" and ALO member Lebo performs "Oh Hanukkah." Zach Rogue of Rogue Wave goes a little more holiday-poppy with his original "Mrs. Santa Claus," Zach Gill brings two covers, "Christmas Time Is Here" and, in a duet with Mimi Naja, "Sleigh Ride," and Bahamas puts a reggae touch to "I'll Be Home For Christmas." Adam Topol gives us the nostalgic original "Old Time Christmas," Paula Fuga puts a little beat under the steel guitars for "Mele Kalikimaka," and John Cragie gets help from Gill and Lebo on a cover of "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)." Like the two previous entries in this series, we get a mix of familiar and new sounds that are both warm and contemporary.

You all know Ronnie, of course, and Elle's known for her big hit "Exes & Ohhs," and here they are with this 2019 tune about holiday romance. Not surprisingly, this is made to remind you of the Phil Spector Christmas album, and well, that and these two's big vocal sounds should be enough to sell you.

I haven't heard these guys before, but their press release makes it sound like they've been dominating the charts for the past 10 years. Be that as it may, what we're concerned with is the music, and this 2019 release is a solid power pop holiday single, although they gave it a name as though it were an EP. "I Love the Christmastime" is the uptempo side of this pair, and they go folk-pop on the other tune, "Listen Up! It's Christmastime." I'll take the uptempo tune for a playlist, but you might want both. Appears to only be available from Big Stir itself.

This group previously gave us a reverent cover of "Marshmallow World," and for 2019 they teamed up with Dylan Minnette for this poppy midtempo original, which he co-wrote and sang with them. It's your basic Christmastime romance leavened with a bit of irony, and if they're not careful it could end up in a Hallmark movie. Nevertheless, I like this a lot.

Liam's a former "X-Factor" contestant who ended up as a member of One Direction and has since gone solo as a singer, songwriter and producer. This is a warm ballad hinting at romantic dysfunction with the hope that the holidays will point the way to a happy ending. More of an aspiring pop radio staple to my ears, but it's a good new original holiday song.

This Massachussets rock band has been performing on and off since the early 1990s, and this 2019 Christmas EP has been billed as their latest reunion. Leading off is the snarky and self-aware piano rocker "(All I Want For Christmas Is To) Rage With My Friends," which ends with Santa saying children are going to be disappointed "because I'm staying at this party." The chugging rocker "Rebellion of Winter" is next, and they go even heavier with "Do Good Stuff," a hard rocker admonishing everyone to be aware that Santa knows what we're all up to. I'm loving this solid rocking holiday spirit and I'm sure you will too.

Sasami Ashworth is a singer-songwriter and film scorer who recently went solo, and for 2019 she adds this holiday EP to her discography. "Little Drummer Boy" is a cool electronic grunge arrangement of the popular carol, and she also does a mostly acoustic version of "Silent Night." The third tune is an original, "It's You," mostly keyboards and drum machine with her subtle alto carrying the melody. Definitely indie rock in sensibility, and a worthwhile add to your holiday playlists.