... the after-Christmas edition.
HO HO WHO: It’s hard to say, based on the cutesy but ultimately unhelpful bio on his website and his meager IMDB profile. He’s ostensibly a comedian, but that’s in the eye of the beholder, I guess. This song is a cut from what he calls a “potential Christmas album.”
DREAMING OF A [...]
HO HO WHO: Rufus Wainwright and Sharon Van Etten pair up for the date-rape-iest holiday duet ever to grace a piano bar.
SO REALLY I'D BETTER SCURRY: This straightforward version of the wintertime classic doesn't veer from the prototypical: straightforward piano accompaniment, sultry harmonies, playful-if-potentially-menacing back-and-forth vocals.
MAYBE JUST A HALF A DRINK MORE: Van Etten, channeling [...]
HO HO WHO: The burly Boot Camp Clik and Random Axe member Sean Price, aka Ruck of Heltah Skeltah, aka Seanwuar.
STOCKING FULL OF BOOM-BAP: If you're a certified holiday hater, there's nothing but raunchy felicity within this two minutes of yuletide hip-hop catharsis. Producer Khrysis builds a yeti-sized beat from bits of the Seussian "You're [...]
HO HO WHO: Cult grindcore favorite Agoraphobic Nosebleed was founded by Pig Destroyer guitarist Scott Hull in Springfield, Mass., back in 1994. The band's new "Merry Chrystmeth" is a one-sided holiday flexi-disc packaged with the January 2013 issue of popular U.S. metal magazine Decibel.
FROZEN CORPSE STUFFED WITH DOPE: This isn't Agoraphobic Nosebleed's first wintertime rodeo: Last year [...]
HO HO WHO: It's Krispy Kreme, the rapper Wikipedia describes as "Southern speaking." Kreme first shot to fameishness after posting a rap video that features him wielding firearms in a basement and delivering unconventional boasts like "I made out with so many girls/made out with every girl in the world." While he was forced to [...]
HO HO WHO: Emm has been hailed as "England's new pastoral-folk prince." He is bearded.
WARM FIRE AT FURRY HOUSE PARTY: Oh come all ye tweeful. This song, a sweet ditty about lights in trees and friends and stuff, sidesteps the treacle, though it's best absorbed along with its delightful animated music video. In it, our [...]
HO HO WHO: You may know Trans-Siberian Orchestra as that enduring, proggy, anti-rock assembly that boasts an unforgivable ratio of three full-length albums about Christmas to two that aren’t about Christmas. (One is about Beethoven, and the other one is about castles.) Even Santa Claus is all, "Bro, y’all gotta chill with the Christmas records." And even unabashed shill [...]
HO HO WHO: The off-kilter D.C. band The Caribbean (primarily drummer/bassist/vocalist Matthew Byars) and D.C. experimentalist Jeff Barsky, aka Insect Factory.
ALTERED BOYS: "Be Thou My Vision" is a sixth-century Irish text that was turned into an English-language hymn early in the 20th century. These thoughtful indie dudes set it within cathedral-sized sonics (the drones by [...]
HO HO WHO: A Virginia Beach power-pop group that has been around like, forever. Most of The Mockers are Jewish.
TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK, SORT OF: The song exists because some people say there's a war on Christmas. The Mockers are saying that it's logically impossible to wage a successful war on Christmas, and thus any [...]
HO HO WHO: Not satisfied with merely delivering us a five-disc box set of holiday music, Sufjan Stevens has gathered a few collaborators to put together Chopped and Scrooged, a Christmas mixtape with a seething disregard for traditional carols. Playing the red-nosed outcast leading Sufjan's herd of guests is Kitty Pryde, a teenage rapper who [...]
