It’s time—time to banish the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack from my house with an updated playlist of Christmas music.
Each year, as I start sifting through new Christmas releases, I start to worry—What if I can’t find enough? What if there’s nothing all that interesting?—but that foreboding feeling quickly melts away. So many musicians are still writing new Christmas songs and rearranging old ones.
Yet this was the first year I’ve had to navigate an alarming amount of AI-generated Christmas music. AI-generated Christian artist Solomon Ray is at the top of the iTunes chart with a new Christmas album, and Amazon Music’s list of forthcoming holiday releases is at least half AI music.
Maybe that’s why I gravitated toward albums that feel human. I found myself captivated by Andrew Osenga’s warm, textured voice, Sarah Willis’s experimental classical–Latin jazz fusion, Victory Boyd’s understated arrangements of carols, and Rend Collective’s trademark combination of folk and unironic enthusiasm.
I’ve heard so many versions of “Silent Night” and “Feliz Navidad,” but musicians are interpreters who can always find something new to say in a song. I think I have a new appreciation for that gift this year.
Christmas Hymns, Victory
Detroit-raised singer and songwriter Victory Boyd has a voice that will immediately pull you out of the holiday music lull. She possesses singular warmth and interpretive sensibility; she is a magnetic vocalist, sometimes compared to Tracy Chapman and Nina Simone.
On Christmas Hymns, Boyd brings her R & B, soul, and jazz fusion to ten familiar songs, starting with a sparse, tender arrangement of “The First Noel” that showcases her expansive range. Listeners might expect that gentle, quiet energy to crescendo throughout the album, but it doesn’t. Boyd chooses to offer an album of hymns on voice and guitar, each one slow and contemplative, inviting attention to the well-worn lyrics and the quality of her voice.
The final track, “O Come Let Us Adore Him,” feels like an earnest invitation to rest and worship and adore; Boyd softly closes the album with a greeting, “Merry Christmas.”
It’s Almost Christmas Collection, Praytell (Jon and Valeria Guerra)
Jon Guerra, a cerebral singer-songwriter whose 2023 album Ordinary Ways received critical acclaim, performs as the duo Praytell with his wife, Valerie. The Guerras recorded It’s Almost Christmas ten years ago, but this new collection isn’t a glorified rerelease. The updated version has twice the number of tracks, adding new selections such as “Wonderful Christmastime,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” and “Silent Night.”
The string orchestrations on the album shimmer; Valerie Guerra is a violinist, and the Guerras’ knack for arranging shows up in both the lush orchestral underlays and the deft use of solo string lines. The 24 tracks on the album offer spirited renditions of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and “Frosty the Snowman” alongside devotional songs like “Lord Remind Me,” a call to reflect on the Incarnation as a source of hope:
When I hear the news and hear another war has begun
And I wonder if God’s on the side of either one
I hear bullet, nail, or handcuff, he bore all of them
And in the light my heart’s as dark as anyone’s
Lord, remind me
She Composed: The Holidays, Chloe Flower
Chloe Flower might be the only classical musician who can say that she has collaborated with Celine Dion, Lil Baby, Meek Mill, 2 Chainz, Nas, and Cardi B. Some call her the “Millennial Liberace”—she’s glamorous, virtuosic, and dramatic, and she’s long had an interest in elevating the work of female composers.
Her new album is a collection of arrangements of winter and holiday works by female composers, who so often get overlooked in the world of classical music. “I’ve heard so many versions of ‘Sleigh Ride’ and [George Frideric] Handel’s ‘Messiah, HWV 56,’” Flowers said in an interview earlier this month. “But there’s actually so many women-composed holiday music out there that haven’t been given the opportunity to be performed.”
If you’re ready for some instrumental holiday music beyond Handel’s Messiah and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, Flower’s new album may be a good addition to your seasonal playlist. “Dance of the Caribou” is a cinematic piece for piano and orchestra, with sonic sparkle added by prominent sleigh bells. The album features two versions of “Snow Song” by Florence Price, the first African American woman to have her work performed by a major American orchestra.
Christmas Hymns, Andrew Osenga
Andrew Osenga, former member of The Normals and Caedmon’s Call, has a gift for making simplicity sound lush. The selections on Christmas Hymns are modestly arranged for guitar, occasional piano, and voices, but the layers of each sound and their treatment fit together to create something that enfolds the listener.
Osenga whispers more than he shouts; “O Holy Night” is barely sung. I found myself thinking of the winter nights I’ve murmured that song to a baby or drowsy toddler in hushed tones.
(I’m aware that there are two albums on this list titled Christmas Hymns, but I can promise that listening to both won’t feel redundant. They are both meditative and decidedly non-hype in flavor. But this year, I welcome the invitation to slowness, meditation, and whispering hope.)
A Very Laufey Holiday 2025, Laufey
Icelandic singer and songwriter Laufey (Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir) has garnered acclaim for her eclectic jazz-classical-pop music, winning Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at the 2024 Grammy Awards. Her voice is perfectly suited to an album of Christmas jazz and pop standards, so if you’re looking for something holiday-party-ready, this is for you.
Laufey’s smooth vocal delivery shines on the first tracks, “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” and “Santa Baby.” Her gift for vocal and instrumental arranging is apparent throughout the album, especially on tracks like “Christmas Dreaming,” which features close vocal harmonies and string interludes. It’s a little schmaltzy, but it’s easy to forgive because, first of all, these are Christmas standards, and second, Laufey has made it her mission to reinvigorate interest in classical music and jazz among those who might otherwise write off the genres as relics.
Christmas in Belfast, Rend Collective
Since 2012, Northern Irish group Rend Collective has been releasing worshipful songs with folk and Celtic inflections. Fans flock to their concerts because of the group’s infectious enthusiasm and joy; they’re a Christian group that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
The playfulness (and dare I say, fearless cheesiness) of the song “Christmas in Belfast” exemplifies the lightheartedness that Rend Collective has become known for. Thirty years ago, Christian bands would have been advised to avoid singing about celebrating in pubs and throwing back pints, but here, Rend Collective gives us a Christmas drinking tune. And why not?
There’s also a driving instrumental arrangement of “Carol of the Bells” and a stomp-and-holler folk rendition of “Feliz Navidad.”
The final track’s title is “A Spontaneous Outburst of Festive Joy,” a guitar-driven, wordless jam session that closes the album with what feels like the beginning of something. A voice calls out transitions between sections of the song, and the instruments linger on suspensions and build toward a climax that never really arrives. It evokes the kind of hope we feel every Christmas as we celebrate an arrival in the midst of our already and not yet.
Cuban Christmas, Sarah Willis and Sarahbanda
Sarah Willis is a French horn player with the Berlin Philharmonic. This album is a compilation of original Latin jazz arrangements. If you’re wondering how those fit together, I don’t blame you. In 2020, Willis released the first installment of the three-album Mozart y Mambo project, which showcased arrangements of Mozart’s works fused with Cuban dance rhythms. Since then, Willis and her “Sarahbanda” have been making music that combines classical orchestration with Afro-Cuban style.
Cuban Christmas is a vibrant collection of festive renditions of holiday pop standards (“The Christmas Song,” “White Christmas,” “Feliz Navidad”) and classical works like selections from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and the “Allegro” from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3.
The album showcases Afro-Cuban rhythm and grooves; listeners will hear mambo, salsa, rumba, and so on underlying and reframing recognizable tunes.
It’s an album that you might put on for a party then find yourself tuning into again every once in a while—“Wait, the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” doesn’t usually have a groove.”
The Advent Sessions, Caroline Cobb
Singer and songwriter Caroline Cobb’s live Advent album is the perfect accompaniment for the dark winter days leading up to Christmas Eve. It’s restrained and lyrically rich, showcasing the versatility of Cobb’s voice and her ability to bring power, sensitivity, grit, and lightness.
The album opens with “We Wait for You,” a mid-tempo ballad full of poetic images of a broken, expectant world:
A broken mirror, painted black
There is no light reflected back
Thorns grow up where there was green
All sorrow, shame and broken things
Paradise has barred its doors
It’s guarded by the flaming swords
We can’t go back, we can’t go back
“Pave Every Road (Isaiah)” is an upbeat, blues-inflected folk-rock track with a simple, repeated refrain: “I see the sun rising.”
The album closes with “The Year of His Favor (Isaiah 61),” a simple and reflective meditation on a prophetic text, with a triumphant bridge that invites the listener to pause on this hopeful vision of justice and the coming kingdom:
The broken dance, the blind will see
The sick are healed, the mute will sing
The dead alive, the sinner free
The kingdom’s here, at last, the King!
Listen to selections from this year’s Christmas releases:
And catch up on some of our previous picks:
