Laufey’s holiday releases have a knack for feeling like instant canon — the kind of version that slides into your rotation, comes back each December, and feels like a favorite ornament you forgot you owned until you put it up and fall in love all over again. Her sound is pure “future nostalgia”: modern pop ease wrapped in classic jazz and bossa nova phrasing, carried by a distinctively low, smooth voice that nods to Peggy Lee and Julie London, with a little Ella Fitzgerald sparkle. Her take on “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” arrives with an adorable stop-motion video that feels like a miniature holiday keepsake — the kind that makes you remember exactly how you ended up with your favorite ornament in the first place.
Melissa Carper writes with a John Prine / Blaze Foley plainspoken magic — funny, tender, and so human it feels like it’s always been in your life. “Made With Love” is a gentle antidote to the Amazon-ification of the holidays, celebrating the stuff that can’t be rushed or drop-shipped: grandma’s apple strudel, mama’s tuna noodle, a hand-crocheted sweater “one stitch at a time,” and the kind of care that actually lasts. The homemade Fayetteville party video — shot by passing an iPhone around friends and family — makes it feel like you’ve been invited in, fed, and sent home with something one-of-a-kind.
Fresh off his first-ever US tour supporting Geese, Dove Ellis is already getting comparisons to Jeff Buckley and the unmistakable blog-rock-era charge (think: Beirut’s wandering croon with a hint of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s nervy bite). Our advice? Don’t judge the gift by its wrapping paper: before the music press puts this new voice in a box, sit with the songs and unwrap them for yourself. “It Is a Blizzard” isn’t overtly Christmas, but it’s a subdued holiday tune in the best way, more Pretenders’ “2000 Miles” or Low’s Christmas album than anything jingly; when he repeats “I’ll be gone by Christmas,” it turns small domestic details into something wintry and haunting, like a goodbye written in fog on a windowpane.
Like a Christmas miracle, this gauzey-light xmas track from Atlanta band Silk Daisys appears, untethered by album or by press junket, a gift, a twinkling reminder of goodwill and peace on Earth. For real though, this sweet one-off brings back the original Christmas release, and with it, a genuine backstory: frontman James Abercrombie noodled it out in a moment of calm reflection after presents were opened one Christmas morning. If this is your intro to Silk Daisys, all the better: the band’s self-titled EP of '90s-style dream-pop and shoegaze is out now and well worthy of your ears, at any time of year.
What better time for life-size puppets than the holidays? Yo Gabba Gabba! have got your back with this pumped-up, sugar-frosted, to-eleven Christmas celebration track. If your little ones have grown bored with the classics, here’s a thoroughly modern holiday track to match their sugar high this Christmas Eve eve. In their words, “What an awesome song!”
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