UPCOMING: Indie for the Holidays, An Amazon Original Playlist (2015)

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Amazon has announced a follow-up to their (IMHO) “meh” 2014 playlist, All is Bright. Their playlist was expansive, 43 songs, and with such a wide scope, there was no way that they were going to make this indie grinch happy. Too many expected covers from too many a coffee-shop friendly artist. This year, however, Amazon has tweaked their formula, and decided to curate a more adventurous playlist. The first song, Sondre Lerche & Jherek Bischoff‘s “Surviving Christmas” is presently streaming exclusively over at Stereogum. Its lovely throwback production is unsurprising, as I feel Sondre has been moving toward crooner for a years now (certainly not a bad thing – he’s great!). The lyrics are most certainly poignant, while sometimes remaining playful – Frank Sinatra would be proud. I am, however, very curious what electropop wildcard YACHT‘s track will be like, or serially grumpy Guided by Voices frontman Bob Pollard‘s What Begins New Year’s Day.” Rogue Wave have tried their hand at Christmas tracks before, as has (to a lesser extent) Langhorne Slim. There are also some newcomers (to me), such as Irish singer/songwriter SOAK, Seattle folk-pop band Ivan and Alyosha, and Swedish gothic pop singer Anna von Hausswolff that all have interesting biographies that make me want to hear more. I am most definitely intrigued, and hope that something great will come out of this for my 2015 mix. The entire playlist will be released on November 20th, so until then… just gotta wait.

LISTEN

EDIT: I’ve added all available (free) streaming songs to a playlist.