ExComm’s 2025 Winter Wonderland Playlist!
Tis the season! Celebrating the transition of seasons with a perfectly curated winter playlist made by the members of our 2025 Executive Committee. Enjoy the playlist and the wonderful winter season!
EL’S RECS
“En Ville la Veille de Noël” – Jenn Grant
This track has a wonderful older sound to it, despite being released in 2020! Jenn Grant is a Canadian artist from Nova Scotia, who has won multiple awards for her music. Her voice is just gorgeous, and really invokes the longing and nostalgia associated with the Christmas/winter season. Truly just a lovely track to listen to to get in that holiday spirit!
“Sweet Dreams” – The Cradle
This track is very homey and youthful sounding, despite being a satire on how we react to our influx of news. It describes watching different channels on New Year’s Eve, some carrying horrible news and others being fun or even mundane. Although this is poking fun, it feels very fitting for winter and the upcoming New Years holiday. This track also has a lot of lovely wind and acoustic instruments that blend together really well, with feminine and masculine vocals that melt together like magic.
“The Coldest Winter On Top of Shark Peak” – Post Office Winter
This song starts out as very gentle and calm, with a cutesy and almost twee vibe to it, and then morphs into a more loud, grunge track toward the end. The lyrics are definitely angsty, fitting for that home-for-the-holidays teenage angst that I always find returns to me during the holiday season.
SARAH B.’S RECS
“Return From The Ice” – Acetone
This is a chill and relaxing track that will ease you into the slow down of winter vacation. Acetone was a 90s alternative rock band from LA and they are one of my favorites. They have a soft alternative rock that fits perfect for a blustery winter beach day.
“Footprints In The Snow” – Disco Inferno
This is one of my favorite new finds from the KCSB physical media library. This track features so many interesting sonic elements including the sound of boots crunching fresh snow which is one of the most delightful winter sounds. It is so unique, amusing, and wintery.
“A Good Friend Is Always Around” – The American Analog Set
This track is so cozy and comforting it feels like a winter night gathered around the fireplace drinking hot cocoa with good friends. The American Analog Set is a recent favorite band of mine with so many amazing tracks it was hard to pick just one. Their music has such a warm quality to it that is much needed during the cold wintertime, that and good friends.
“Dreampopper’s Tribute” – Rumskib
Winter in California often means gray gloomy weather and this is a track to match that hazy, mystical mood. Rumskib is a shoegaze duo from Denmark putting out tracks that are layered and expansive in such an ethereal and effortless way. Recommend if you like My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, and Slowdive.
“Little Saint Nick” – Best Coast
Upbeat and rocking cover of The Beach Boys Christmas track from LA indie group Best Coast. It can be hard to find a Christmas song that hasn’t been played to death so here’s a fresh take on a classic and a track I will have on repeat this holiday season.
LILY’S RECS
“Pink Frost” – The Chills
Jangly New-Zealand guitar pop with a melancholic wintry flair.
“Frost and Fire” – Cirith Ungol
LOCAL and classic old-school heavy metal from Ventura heshers Cirith Ungol – one of the first and most influential heavy/power metal bands.
“Teenage Iceage” – Suzy Andrews
Charmingly aloof synthpop from a mid-80s Frenchwoman.
ISABELLE’S RECS
“Winter Wonderland” – Cap’n Jazz
A classic emo cover of a classic Christmas song. This song sounds as though it’s sung by a chorus – almost as if a rowdy group of teenage boys went Christmas caroling and this was the result.
“leave” – awakebutstillinbed
Another classic emo track sung by Bay Area band awakebutstillinbed. If you’re looking for a less jolly holiday vibe, this song is for you: “every winter it’s the same fear; i’m gonna be alone on christmas this year.”
“Sled” – 100%
This song, sung by 100% (a side project of the lofi artist Whatever, Dad), perfectly encapsulates the feeling of seasons transitioning from fall to winter. The background of this song is a windy/snowy ambiance – it sounds like they stood on top of a hill recording the noise around them and sang while walking in the snow.
MADDIE’S RECS
I found this track off of a 7 inch vinyl here at the KCSB library and have been listening to it on repeat for the winter season. Julie Doiron’s voice is so magical and soft, and always feels like a warm blanket, perfect for the biting winter cold.
“Patterns” – Suse Millemann
I’m not sure why, but every winter season this song is constantly flowing from my headphones. Suse Millemann’s somber tone fills me with that usual sadness I feel everytime it starts getting dark earlier, and the late 80s, early 90s production, adds to the drama and the mystique of it all making it perfect for when you’re feeling overly contemplative walking through the rain or snow.
“Holy Smoke” – Vashti Bunyan
What feels more like snow falling atop mountains, than Vashti Bunyan’s sweet, soft voice accompanied by twinkly keys and soft guitar? This song perfectly encapsulates the feeling of those few weeks leading up to Christmas, a bit somber, a bit hopeful, and mostly finding warmth and beauty amongst the darkest season.
LOGAN’S RECS
“When You and I Were Young” – The Clientele
Spacey, nostalgic, London indie pop, with Alasdair MacLean painting a picture of a Winter’s night over twinkly guitar melodies and soft rock drums. The album cover really does the song justice, with a blurred landscape suggesting stepping into someone else’s fond memories.
“Winter in the Country” – The Cleaners From Venus
80s lo-fi British pop from The Cleaners From Venus, and a track that depicts a less-than-cozy rural experience of Winter. Eerie piano melodies back lyrics depicting poverty and alienation in the countryside, a social commentary of 1980s Britain.
“The 2013th Noel” – Emperor X
Off his 2013 Christmas spoof album, Berlin-based techno-pop artist Emperor X weaves political commentary impossibly with techno elements and the classic melody of the Christmas carol “The First Noel”.
AVERY M’S RECS
“Lakes of Canada” – the innocence mission
Karen Peris’ delicate vocals are perfect to accompany you on a cold day. She describes a wintertime scene, but the lyrics are cryptic, obscuring any clear narrative in the same way snow-filled air obstructs vision.
SARAH N. RECS
“Peppermint” – Anna Justen
I really love the way Anna Justen is able to weave together the elements of bedroom-pop indie, with grittier, more abrasive hyperpop elements in this track. Her soft, almost tender vocals—paired with a very intimate, melancholic chord progression that favors Phoebe Bridgers— creates a striking contrast with the haunting layer of vocal glitches she utilizes to harmonize with herself. The result of this is a very disjointed dialogue between her and an elusive, more detached version of her own voice; I think this makes the track feel both delicate and disorienting in the utmost intentional way. The title of the track being called “Peppermint” and her revisiting this word throughout the song only made it all the more appropriate to associate it with the chilling, yet nostalgic atmosphere reminiscent of winter… it’s just too good.
“Project_6” – Devi McCallion
Obsessed with this Ukranian electro track from Devi McCallion’s “I Want Things To Be Beautiful” maxi-single/short EP. McCallion’s somewhat lethargic vocals pair so well with the heavy bass, as well as this coarse static/distortion that I think it’s fair to say is the structural spine of the song. I can’t help but envision myself blasting this song in my earphones while walking back from class late at night, and thick fog permeating the air— which I do regularly so that’s probably why, but it’s so fitting for the occasion.
“Snow Purple Treasures” – Sweet Trip
This is a winter classic for me—as soon as we touch down in December… this track is playing incessantly. My favorite thing about it is the way it progresses from this incredibly tender, almost fragile acoustic strum and soft, high-pitched vocals to this overwhelmingly loud but heavenly cacophony of sound. Valerie Cooper’s breathy, ghost-like vocals with these subtle synth textures completely envelope you from beginning to end, and I just think it’s such a staple for the winter time. Every time I close my eyes whilst listening to this track, I feel like that scene in The Perks of Being a Wallflower where Charlie plops to the ground and makes a snow angel.