Indigo Girls Give the Gift of 'Holly Happy Days'

The Indigo Girls have accomplished a lot in their long career, but one thing they've never done is record a holiday album. But this year, the duo of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers are giving their fans the gift of 'Holly Happy Days,' a collection of classic and original holiday songs.

"Before, we just felt like there are so many great holiday records already," Ray tells Spinner. "We have a lot of respect for that genre because there have been some great ones in the past, but we just felt like, 'OK, we can do this. We'll just try to do what we do and pick the songs we like.'"

'Happy Holly Days' features many of the genre's classics like 'Oh Holy Night' and 'I'll Be Home for Christmas,' a cover of Woody Guthrie's 'Happy Joyous Hanukah,' as well as three new original songs, 'Your Holiday Song,' 'Mistletoe' and 'The Wonder Song.'

As somewhat of an aficionado on the genre, Ray has a list of her favorite holiday albums. "There was a record of Nat King Cole songs I know was playing in the house a lot. When I kind of started listening to my own Christmas music, the Roches had a Christmas record that I really love," she says. "And I just love the classic kind of holiday songs: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, that kind of stuff, and some of the more jazz singers."

When it comes to contemporary artists, there is one act that Ray feels captures the holiday season perfectly. "There's Sufjan Stevens' records, he's done so much holiday music. He's probably written like 20 holiday songs, probably more," she says, laughing. "The holiday music he's written is really good, pretty classic sounding. Most of the stuff is produced acoustically and some of it's produced full-on kind of punk."

'Holly Happy Days' is available now from Vanguard.