A Polaroid For Christmas 2024, various artists (Memoria Polaroid)

Once again, the Italian music blog Memoria Polaroid has compiled a selection of indie rock bands worldwide contributing holiday-oriented songs. As you might imagine, there are a fair number of Italian bands singing in their native language, but about half these songs are in English, starting with PoPo's cover of Low's "Just Like Christmas," a crunchy rendition possibly inspired by Jesus and Mary Chain. The Ian Fays offer "Set the Table," a tune that seems to suggest someone long gone is being asked to set the holiday table. Shiva Bakta perform "Christmas Quarantine," the premise of which may seem old hat at this point but don't worry, the next American administration seems poised to start a bird flu pandemic. Her Skin does "I'll Be Happy Anyways," a cool pop tune about lost love on the holiday, Waving Blue featuring Matilde gives us "See You at the Club for Christmas," a fairly doomy folk strum rather than the dance tune you might expect, and Neucloud has "In Colder Times," a midtempo indie rocker with just a little David Lynch overlaid on it. Altre di has "No Guest List," a semi-rockabilly flavored raver that doesn't appear to have a holiday connection, and the same can be said for Casta's cover of the Cardigans' "My Favorite Game" and Heron King's version of the Bobby Charles song "I Must Be In a Good Place Now." Danxgerous (no typo) does Joni Mitchell's "River" with guitar and celeste, Georgia, Georgia performs "Good Luck Babe" and AGA gives us a tone poem, "Open in the Eyes." Among the Italian language offerings, Setti's "Star" is a nice 60s folk rock opener, Deine Mutti goes lo-fi on "Voglio dormire fino a Natale," Olymipa Mare sings a folky "Giallo," Bauf introduces some hip-hop elements on "L'infanzia di Maria," and Baseball Gregg performs "stefania." Get it from Bandcamp as always, and this year's charity being supported by the collection is the non-governmental organization Palestine Children's Relief Fund.