YAST have just released their new album “My Dreams Did Finally Come True”. Bigger, better, and sweeter than ever before. Here’s a taste in the shape of the single “Together Forever”:

YAST on Tumblr – on Facebook – on Spotify – on Apple Music

YAST are back with a new single, the first one from their upcoming album. “When You’re Around” is the name of the tune, a love story the singer Marcus Norberg wrote to his girlfriend.

YAST on Tumblr – on Facebook – on Spotify – on Wimp

True to my traditions I’ve collected some new Christmas songs this year also, which I’m going to present here today.

Our friends in Crying Day Care Choir have recorded a Christmas EP with four tracks, called “Christmas Day Care Choir”. What’s extra nice about this is that they are donating all income from the album to Musikhjälpen during this week, i.e. until December 15th. Musikhjälpen is a project run by the public TV and Radio in Sweden each year, collecting money for people in need. This year it’s about women’s rights to survive pregnancies. If you’d like to help the band to help, you can just click download in the player below.

YAST presented their album debut earlier this year and walks out of it with this fine Christmas song, “If Santa Ain’t Real”, accompanied by Alice Boman on backing vocals.

Magnus Bergman has worked hard with releasing singles this year, and it’s only logical that he would make a Christmas single as well. It’s called “Decembernatt” and is a remake of his own song, this time in a duet version together with Kim Vestin.

And it’s great that Brainpool make a comeback after almost ten years of silence, and they do that with this Christmas single “The Last Christmas”:

Tenonsaw, who released the album “Avenging Angels” during the Autumn, also wanted to contribute to the Christmas ambience. Of course they also want to experiment, and they do this by combining Mariah Careys “All I Want For Christmas Is You” and U2:s “All I Want Is You” into this song:

Next up is some lovely classical sounding Christmas jazz from Gunhild Carling, here with her new single “Winter’s Day”:

I’m finishing with celtic punk rockers Finnegan’s Hell, who serve us a Christmas song in the spirit of social realism, as they write, “Drunken Christmas (An Irish Christmas Song)”:

I hope you can find your Christmas spirit in this post; there are quite different versions to choose from here above. Merry Christmas to you, and thank you for coming here reading my posts and most of all for listening to the music.

I wrote about YAST’s debut album a couple of weeks ago. And since they are releasing a new single today I’m going to do it again, and then about a single which contains one of my favourites from the record, “YAST”. It’s a real single too, with a b-side, a new song, the excellent “This Lonesome Life”. Help yourselves!.

YAST on Tumblr – on Facebook – on Spotify – on Wimp

I wrote about YAST, or Youth and Student Travel, already in the first stumbling steps of this blog in 2008. They had just left their hometown Sandviken for Malmö, or at least they were in the process of doing so, and they had a couple of DIY-EP:s in their luggage. Now, five years later, they have just released their debut album, they work with the label  Adrian Recordings and right now they are touring in Europe.

When I listen to the new album it strikes me how well they had defined their music already back then, in the beginning. It’s still this dreamy, light indie pop, with a laidback attitude, a playful naivety and sweet melodies. But of course, they have a bigger sound now, it’s more polished, there are more and smoother vocal harmonies as well as guitar layers and their registry is wider. It’s an album that feels perfect for a summery, cloud-watching day and and album fit for a band that have one foot in the gound where they started and the other foot in a big step towards new destinations.

YAST on Tumblr – on Facebook – on Spotify – on Wimp