Fruitcake, Sabrina Carpenter (Island)

This pop-rock singer-songwriter had a hit last year with the hip-hop-flavored "Nonsense," and for 2023 she drops this six-song EP featuring "A Nonsense Christmas," a holiday reworking of her hit. That and four other songs here are original to her, including "Cindy Lou Who," in which she sings of the Whoville denizen as a romantic rival; "Buy Me Presents" is a midtempo number, bouncy and hook-laden, and humorously brazen about its point; "Santa Doesn't Know You Like I Do" is a holiday hookup song; and "Is It New Year's Yet?" is a solidly synth-funky way to take you out of the current year. Things wrap up with "White Christmas," in which she kicks off with some melismatic vocal exercises, but then swings into a modernized version of the classic Drifters arrangement. I would note that Sabrina's "cute chick" voice might mask the fact that the download vendors have marked this EP as "explicit," though that's more thematic than anything to do with the seven words you can't say on television.