New Music of the Day, December 25:

Kaskade, "Winter Wonderland"
Tom Chaplin, "2000 Miles"
Red Empire, "A Dublin Christmas"

To be honest, 2017 hasn't been a great year for Christmas music. (2017 hasn't been a great year for much of anything). But amongst the lumps of coal--like Sia's horrifically-titled "Santa's Coming for Us"--I've picked out a few musical gifts for you.

Kaskade's album of Christmas classics done in EDM-style sounds like an idea that shouldn't work. And mostly it doesn't, because the traditional carols they're covering barely count as songs in the modern sense; all the production tricks in the world won't make "Silent Night" or "Deck the Halls" interesting. But they DO manage to turn "Winter Wonderland" into a moody banger, which is an accomplishment in itself.

Former Keane frontman Tom Chaplin's Christmas album is more traditional, which means that most of it is pretty boring. But the full choir and Chaplin's choirboy voice all really work on his dramatic cover of a modern Christmas classic, the Pretenders' "2000 Miles."

Finally, I've got an original Christmas song from Irish band Red Empire. Don't let those jingling bells at the beginning fool you; this is one of those melancholy Christmas songs, with lyrics like "Though you're suffering now, know that I suffer with you" and a video that's all about a homeless man getting beat up. In other words, the perfect Christmas song for 2017.