Mistletunes

As previously announced, the Dutch-based Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club dropped their four singles for 2025 today, and the first one comes from this London-based husband-wife duo. The A-side is a selection from the British animated Film "The Snowman," and is well-liked in that country, with multiple versions recorded over the years. This is a folky chanteuse version with Joanna Beck's soprano front and center over finger-picked acoustic guitar. Flip it over for "Face of a Saint," a band original covering similar ground with a similar approach. The vinyl single is sold out and downloads are tied to the ownership model, and there's no streaming other than for Bandcamp users. Past experience suggests there may be alternative ways to hear these songs at some future date, however.

This group is Tim and Vanessa Vass, who have a lengthy past history in rock bands including Red Chair Fadeaway, The Melons, and Dandelion Wine. For 2025 they've dropped, via the singles club, this cool garage rock anthem about holidays in the cosmos. On the B-side we get "Winter," a cover of an original song by a group called The Loft, in which they kick off sounding like someone playing an old spinet organ with the rhythm box turned on, but real drums eventually kick in on this Velvets-feeling rendition. Vinyl copies are still available at Bandcamp with downloads conditioned on buying the vinyl, and I found it on Spotify for streaming as well. It's also on Amazon digitally, click the cover to access it there.

This Montreal band went all pancultural on us on this 2025 Christmas single, melding Middle Eastern sounds with a cool pop-rock arrangement. Flip this one over for "Jingle Bells," a nice mid-60s psychedelic arrangement with a definite influence from Beatles music of the same period. Quite enjoyable. Snowflakes Singles Club's Bandcamp site shows the vinyl's still available, and Spotify has it to stream as well. Click the cover for Amazon availability as well.

Massachusetts-based duo Alicia Jeanine and Jed Smith have been making records for almost a decade, and for 2025 they offer via Snowflakes this jangly original Christmas tune. Really cool, and then they cover Yoko Ono's "Listen, the Snow Is Falling," giving it a similar uptempo jangle-pop arrangement. Cool beans. Unfortunately, Bandcamp shows the vinyl is sold out, and I can't find any streaming other than Bandcamp's home-grown service.

This French/American duo has a huge number of singles and albums out in the market, but I'm just hearing about them now. For 2025, they dropped this single, a wordless vocal instrumental of a song from the "Edward Scissorhands" soundtrack in a style often associated with French pop music, and as with most original instrumentals it's not immediately apparent that it's intended to be holiday music. Nevertheless, it's a lovely little piece and will fit well in your playlists, especially if you lean toward pop. While chasing this down I discovered they have an EP called Holiday Soundtrack from 2017 that's on Spotify but nowhere else I can find, more of the same style applied to such songs as "What Child Is This," "Silent Night," "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "Merry Christmas" and "Next Christmas." Their website mentions there's CD and vinyl versions of this collection available this year but the link to order is dead and there's no mention of it anywhere else.

Back in the 90s, Hoey started down the Christmas road with the original Ho Ho Hoey, offering old-school hard rock instrumental takes of popular carols, and he followed through with second and third albums offering more of the same. Needless to say there have been multiple repackagings of this material as well as Hoey's Christmas concert tours, and if you visit his website there's plenty of swag to go with it. For 2025 he's back with another collection, which I believe is all new recordings, though there may be a couple repeats of previous selections in the playist. The musical style is more hard rock of the kind that filled classic rock airwaves through the years, but given that a tour through the best-sellers lists will expose you to everything from bluegrass to countrypolitan, synth-pop to singer-songwriter sounds, Great American Songbook to garage rock, or 70s top 40 to 90s grunge, there's no reason that you should avoid putting a little of this in your holiday playlists. The title song from the "Peanuts" soundtrack is a gentle ballad treatment featuring a bit of violin, and "O Holy Night" and "Silent Night" are straight 4/4 slow dance takes, but Hoey's versions of "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas," "Up On the Rooftop," "Angels We Have Heard on High," "The Nutcracker (Sugar Plum Fairy)," "Jingle Bells," and "Christmas Miracle" feature plenty of uptempo guitar shredding. "Still Got the Blues For Christmas" is a slow blues, but it's the outlier here in that he sings this one. Downloads and streaming everywhere.

This long-running singer/songwriter commandeers Richard Thompson's classic tune as the "Santa Version" for the 2025 holidays. A nice cover, only lightly adapted for the holiday, so maybe not for everyone's playlists, but I like it.

This Norwegian singer/songwriter is better known behind the scenes over the past couple of decades, having written songs for everyone from Britney Spears to Leona Lewis, but she's probably more famous in her native land as a judge for that country's version of talent show "Idol." Nevertheless, she's got a couple of decades of experience in the business, and for 2025 she's dropped a full album of original tunes to celebrate the winter holidays. I wouldn't judge this collection by the title song, which suggests some sort of fourth-wall-breaking music biz memoir but is just a generic nod to holiday traditions. For that sort of thing, skip over to the uptempo "All You Want For Christmas Is Me," nodding to the Mariah Carey anthem without mentioning it or lifting from it. "A Good Year" is a smart promise that next year will be the milestone to look forward to, because this year su-diddly-ucked. "Christmas '94" is a nostalgic tour of a past holiday, "Christmas Chaos" pokes fun at the preparation rituals, "Desember" (correct spelling) and "Winter Blaze" provide some ballad action, "Jamaica" is a warm-weather holiday tune that lifts a bit from "Mele Kalikimaka," "Happy New Year" rewrites "Auld Lang Syne," and "The Jingle" similarly steals from "Jingle Bells." Almost forgot to note Vetle Røsten is the duet partner on "Jamaica" and the title song. Ina's got a good voice and she can evoke everybody from Abba to Alanis Morissette, and there's a lot of craft involved in what is essentially a contemporary pop outing with a little bit of rock incorporated. Definitely a choice for folks of Scandinavian pop-rock. 

Modern R'nb, hip-hop, Latin music and of course reggaeton have all helped to push old-school reggae into the background, but folks are still playing it in the modern age and rightly so; it's joyful and swingy in ways that reggaeton doesn't quite approach. I haven't encountered Ras Dave before, but this extended EP/mini-LP should remind you of the joys of this musical style. Dig into  "Rudolph a Rasta," reimagining the holiday mascot lighting a spliff on his nose; "Joy to the World" is rendered in a "Reggae Version," in which he replaces the melody with a more minor-key approach that surprises; "Lion Inna Di Manger" imagines the manger scene with a warm-weather lilt; the album's title song is a smooth holiday ballad; and "Santa Smoke Di Herb" is self-explanatory. Opening and closing the collection is "Jingle Bells -- Island Style" and an instrumental "Silent Night -- Christmas Reggae Dub." Streaming and downloads everywhere.

Haven't encountered these folks before, they're from LA by way of Portland OR, and this 2025 holiday entry is lo-fi indie rock and synth-pop, entertaining and a bit snarky. Most of this album is original, though they've sprinkled it with Christmas classics that they dispense with in less than two minutes, sometimes less than one. These include "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," "Deck the Halls," a nicely rocked-up "Silent Night," and "Joy to the World." Among the originals are the Cars-like "Santa Bring Me Some Toys," a garage-band-like "What Do You Want For Christmas," the almost soulful ballad "Egg Nog," the medium shuffle "Christmas Time Once Again," an almost punky "Give It To Me Santa," the hip-hop-adjacent "Naughty List," and two Velvets-like tunes, the ballad "Winter's Joy," and the uptempo "Puttin' the Tinsel Up." This is cool stuff, and at least for now is only available at Bandcamp.

This is a band led by Chi McClean and for 2025 they dropped this EP of familiar holiday favorites done surf-instrumental style. I get that there's a lot of this out there, but if you haven't encountered any music in this style lately, these guys will make you happy you took a chance on them. Upbeat swinging takes on "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town," "Frosty the Snowman," "Sleigh Ride," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "What Child Is This" will brighten your holiday playlists and take them over entirely if you want to.

We covered Vol. 1 when it dropped three years ago, so I'll leave you to follow the link to get most of the background. Once again, this is a group of Pittsburgh-based musicians doing holiday music to raise money for Band Together Pittsburgh, a charity that supports autistic musicians. Scott Blasey of Pittsburgh favorites The Clarks opens the show with "Happy Holiday" in an old-school jazz-pop arrangement, followed by a blast of 60s and 70s rock classics, Jon Belan with Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody," Clinton Clegg's "Everyday Will Be Like a Holiday," Joe Wodarek's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," and Bill Deasy's faithful arrangement of Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas." Stevee Wellons offers a highly syncopated take on "Little Drummer Boy," and you know I like it when folks deviate from the martial paradiddles of the original arrangement. Billy Price and Bill Toms duet on the bluesy "Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin'," Nieds Hotel Band offers Cordell Jackson's "Rock 'n Roll Christmas," Megan Paullet takes on Stevie Wonder's "Someday at Christmas," and Pete Hewlett performs a jazzy "O Come Emmanuel." Joey and Emma Wodarek reenact the Gwen Stefani-Blake Shelton duet on "You Make It Feel Like Christmas," Jeff Jimerson also goes old-school pop on "Sleigh Ride," Kelsey Friday takes "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" out to the country, although the sax solo brings it back, but Frank Viera pushes farther back into country with Brad Paisley's "Penguin, James Penguin." Joe Grusheky and the Houserockers offer "Christmas Everyday," although this cool rocker doesn't resemble any of the songs I remember with this title; couldn't confirm if it's their own original tune. The collection wraps up with "Married and Bright" by Bailey Taylor, "It's Almost Christmas" by Mark Zucco and a countrified "Run Run Rudolph" by Morgan Gruber. All told, these folks acquit themselves well and you won't regret listening to this or plucking tunes for your playlist.

Bring together indie artists Caillat and DeGraw with a Christmas cover for 2025 and you get ... American songbook jazz-pop. Nothing against either of them, but this isn't what you come here for.

OK, the previous item about this album appears to be inoperative, it's streaming everywhere, though hardcopies must be procured through the band's website as described earlier. Anyway, these Scottish power-poppers have come through in 2025, as expected, with a solid rocking holiday entry, mostly covers, except for their previous single release "Christmas Was Better in the 80s." Their choice of covers is not particularly innovative, with old school classics "Twelve Days of Christmas," "Carol of the Bells" and "In the Bleak Midwinter" jostling with rock-era favorites "Wonderful Christmastime," "2000 Miles," and "Stop the Cavalry" and pop favorite "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." But they did reach far enough afield to include "What's This" from "The Nightmare Before Christmas," and to debut a new song, "The Coldest Winter For a Hundred Years." Plenty of playlist candidates here, and some might enjoy this just for hearing them sing in their pronounced Scottish accents.

This popular punk band that specializes in deranged covers of pop tunes recently rebranded from their original name of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. For 2025 they drop a cover of Mariah Carey in their inimitable no-holds-barred, ketchup-on-the-walls style. Guaranteed to frighten the proles if you manage to sneak it into your office Christmas party playlists. Streaming everywhere, of course.

The above-mentioned "artist" is actually a real, if ad hoc, group of British amateur musicians who cooked up this 2025 holiday tune at their regularly scheduled open mics. A little amateur-sounding, though today's technology helps hide that a lot better than it used to, but the sentiment is spot on, especially in tandem with their holiday classic. Streaming and download available.

I go back and forth on country artists, but I know lots of rock fans love Willie, so I'll let you make the determination as to whether you should playlist this 2025 holiday release.

This Chicago band has been around for a couple of decades, with several albums to their credit and a long touring history, including their providing backup for such classic rock veterans as Bad Company's Simon Kirke, Al Stewart and Richie Furay. Best described as rootsy rock, I discovered their Christmas album this year via one of those Facebook "hey we'll send you a free CD!" ads; turns out they've had this in the world since at least 2022, and it's not their first holiday effort, as A Holiday Staycation dropped in 2012. The current album is noteworthy for the four originals it includes, the uptempo title song, the poppy "Snow Day," the bluesy "Snow Shoes," and the ballad "The Tree That Refused to Grow," a bit on the melodramatic side for my taste. The album also includes five covers, "Let It Snow" and "O Holy Night" augmented with a little jazz chording, a perfectly fine "Run Run Rudolph," a solidly bluesy "Blue Christmas," and a smartly rocked-up "Silent Night."  The older release is an EP with five songs, two of which are "Run Run Rudolph" and "Snow Shoes"; they also do "Baby It's Cold Outside," "Holly Jolly Christmas" and "What Christmas Means To Me." Both are up for streaming although the older EP seems to be missing from Amazon, CDs are at the band's website, and you can also download Staycation there as well.  Oops, just surfed around the band's website and discovered they had another EP, Snow Day, in 2017, featuring the title song, "Silent Night" and "Tree" from the current album, plus three other songs, "One Last Kiss," "Eskimo Lady," and "All Eight Days," likely a Hanukkah tune. That's still on offer from the band's website, but only there.

A couple of online sources pointed me to this band stating they had a new single out this year, but it turns out the song is part of an album released in 2024, the one I'm about to describe to you. Girls Aloud is a British vocal group formed on a UK TV show a couple decades ago, had several hits in that country, and apparently has been on a hiatus for the last 10 years, reforming to drop this album and a tour. The single, "Not Tonight Santa," is a cheeky little number about elbowing Santa aside because he's distracting the singer from her lover, and the group offers further originals like the LP's upbeat title song, another pop-rocker called "I Wanna Kiss You So (Christmas in a Nutshell)," and the ballad "Count the Days." They fill out the LP with covers of "White Christmas," "Jingle Bell Rock," "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday," and "Merry Xmas Everybody," the latter two, from Wizzard and Slade, easy indicators that the artists are British, and two dance mixes of "Not Tonight Santa." Streaming in all the usual places.

Helene is a former Eurovision contestant and for 2025 she teamed with Kapoor for this very contemporary pop-rocker celebrating her hometown. Lovely performance and a top contender for your holiday playlists. Streaming on Spotify and Apple Music, but weirdly I can't raise her on Amazon

• Rough Trade, the transatlantic label/record store/swag parlor, is advertising a 2-CD set of Elton John's Christmas Eve 1974 concert at the Hammersmith Odeon. This is of note because there's a live rendition of "White Christmas" featuring Rod Stewart and Gary Glitter here. I haven't heard it, so no notes.
• The Futureheads, Scottish power-poppers who have a 21st century classic with "Christmas Was Better in the 80s," are back for 2025 with a full album of Christmas goodies. Ordinarily I'd go to town on such a development, but unfortunately it's only available on CD and vinyl direct from their UK merch website and, no doubt thanks to the US trade war, shipping alone for either is $38 to my doorstep. No streaming as far as I know for now, but if that changes I'll update everybody.

Texas neo-soulster Leon Bridges drops this cool single for 2025, the title song offering a bit of country influence with a solid R'nb middle tempo while "This Christmas I'm Coming Home" is a funky ballad done as a duet with Norah Jones. A must-have this season and it's available everywhere you stream or download.

John's been on a bit of a Christmas novelty streak lately, and his latest effort is this 2025 cover of "Happy Birthday Jesus," performed by the above-mentioned Little Cindy. The original version appears on his A John Waters Christmas from a couple of decades ago, but I have to say it's one thing for this bit of kitsch to be presented without comment as it was originally, and another thing to reenact it. Nevertheless, there's an audience for this sort of thing and I'm happy for those folks to find this. Flip side is "A Pig Latin Visit From St. Nicholas," which is the holiday classic epic poem read, by Waters, in, wait for it, pig Latin. It's funny, but it's eight minutes long, which would make it a momentum stopper in your novelty playlists. It's on streaming but there's also a vinyl single available, click the cover to get it from Amazon.

I wasn't aware that this popular actress had a music career going, but here she is in 2025 with a cover of the Band's classic tune, a poppy take but still very close to the original arrangement. Found it on Spotify but not on Amazon at this writing. While on Amazon I discovered her 2024 version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," along with a non-holiday album and a handful of other singles for you to check out.

The long-running emo ensemble got tabbed for 2025's Spotify Singles Collection, which means this is exclusive to that particular service for this year, anyway. Nice fast-tempo rock version of the Muppets classic with a guest vocal by Kermit. Other Spotify exclusives this year include Rayvn Lenae's pop-soul take on "O Holy Night," Poppy's cool pop-punk rendition of "Last Christmas," Sofia Camera's cover of Coldplay's "Christmas Lights," and Jordan Davis' country gospel "O Come All Ye Faithful." 

Former ska-punk chanteuse turned talent contest mogul Stefani still records her own stuff, and for 2025 she drops this Amazon Exclusive, an uptempo number that will remind you very much of the Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping." It's part of the soundtrack to an Amazon streaming movie called "Oh. What. Fun." Also exclusive to Amazon this year is Kylie Minogue with the jazz-pop "XMAS," Mariah the Scientist's cover of "Santa Baby," and Marc Anthony covering the Jose Feliciano "Feliz Navidad." 

Taylor was Cindy Lou Who in the Grinch movie featuring Jim Carrey back a quarter-century ago, and since then she's done a bunch of things including fronting the rock band named above. For 2025 they're capitalizing on their singer's history in releasing this EP, six songs kicked off with Jay Leno introducing the grade-school-age Taylor on the Tonight Show, two of which, "Where Are You Christmas?" and "Christmas, Why Can't I Find You," originate with the above-mentioned movie, although they're both actually the same song, the former starting off with the young Taylor's voice flown in followed by the band kicking the song into a rock tempo. The latter is a short ballad in keeping with the original. The rest are band compositions, with "I Wanna Be Your Christmas Tree" and "Christmas Is Killing Me" being strong uptempo rock numbers and "Blues On Christmas" pretty much as advertised, with some tasteful lead guitar. "When We Were Young" is a short piano ballad that simply leads into the similar "Christmas, Why Can't I Find You." Not too shabby. Find it on Amazon or Bandcamp or just stream it.

A serviceable cover of the punk-era Christmas classic from a serviceable imitation of original Akron punks the Dead Boys in 2025. Cheetah Chrome is the last remaining original member and original lead vocalist Stiv Bators passed away after a road accident in Paris some 35 years ago. Good for nostalgia but the original version is out there somewhere if you need this in your playlists. (Stereogum claims there was a move afoot to do some Dead Boys tunes with an AI version of Stiv Bators, but this isn't that; current vocalist Mark Thorn does the honors here.) Click the cover to find it on Amazon or stream it from the usual suspects.

Red's got a history of dropping novelty Christmas singles, and this one, for 2025, is a faux-homespun story about, well, you saw the title, right? A little cornpone for some, but might be a playlist lightener for others. Streaming in all the usual places, though no downloads at this writing. There's an instrumental version in case you need a soundtrack for your Christmas slide deck. 

Kelsie's a theatre brat with a Broadway debut in the jukebox musical "Six!" as well as an active recording artist you may have encountered through a collabo with Backstreet Boys' AJ McLean. For 2025 she drops this upbeat pop-rock sparkler that basks in the joy of a Big Apple holiday. It's on YouTube and is up for streaming and download in the usual places (click cover), though no hardcopy release has turned up so far.