Itty-Bitty Review: Ear Snacks: Songs from the Podcast - Andrew & Polly

Ear Snacks: Songs from the Podcast cover

Readers of the site over the past year or so know I've paid a lot of attention to podcasts made for kids, and one of the most delightful of the bunch is Ear Snacks, a funny and occasionally surreal podcast for preschoolers from Los Angeles-based duo Andrew & Polly.

They've now collected the best tracks featured on the podcast's first season in the prosaically titled Ear Snacks: Songs from the Podcast.  That title is the most straightforward and boring thing about the entire album whose unifying theme, if anything, is silliness.  There's a meta-song for preschoolers about dancing to songs ("Dancing Pants," featuring fellow L.A. musician Mista Cookie Jar), a swinging song about getting the mail ("Mail," natch), and the crunchy pop of "I Wanna Be a Giraffe."  And I haven't even mentioned until now the stone-cold classic kindie classic track "Grapes."  It's not total silliness -- listen to the gorgeous "How Can You Tell If It's Going To Rain?" -- but the meter swings more to the giddy rather than somber.  (Just listen Andrew and Polly hiding in the hidden track at the end...)  I liked Odds & Ends, the duo's previous album that featured some songs from early podcast episodes, but I found the songwriting here to be a step beyond that -- they sound quite confident in their own, quirky voice.

At 37 minutes in length, the album is just the right length for the 2-to-6-year-olds who are the album (and podcast's) target audience.  (A shout-out as well to the liner notes, filled with "Snacktivities" listeners of any age can do using just their creative brains.)  Filled with goofiness leavened with just enough sweetness, Ear Snacks: Songs from the Podcast is a collection of music you don't need the podcast to appreciate.  It's a fabulous compilation of more than a year's worth of creativity, a great bunch of songs for listening at any time.  Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of the album for possible review. We also both participate on the board of Kids Listen, an advocacy group for kids' podcasts.

Practice For The Rest of the Year: XOXO 2016

At the risk of losing most of my readers for this secular kids' music site, let me kick off this essay about a conference about the intersection of the internet and creativity with a story about church.

(That's me, #offbrand since 2002.)

The church I occasionally attend devotes a not insignificant portion of its Sunday service to having attendees offer up their celebrations and concerns to the congregation.  As a relative newcomer to the long-established congregation, I find a lot of it not all that relevant to me -- I don't really know you, let alone your son whose wife just had your fourth grandchild -- but one day a member of the staff put that part of the service into perspective.  She said, "we are open and welcoming in here on Sunday as practice for being open and welcoming in the world the rest of the week."

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I thought about that idea of practicing how you want to be or act a lot during my trip up to Portland, Oregon a couple weeks ago for the 2016 edition of the XOXO Festival.  The festival is an "experimental festival, shared workspace, and online community for independent artists and creators working online."  I attended a couple years ago, and when organizers Andy Baio and Andy McMillan said that the fifth iteration of XOXO could be the last (and that there would definitely be no XOXO in 2017), I threw my name into the attendance lottery.  I am no Darius Kazemi, but my name popped up in the lottery regardless, and so I found myself once more attending a festival not entirely sure whether I belonged.

As I was doing two years ago -- and will likely be doing in the future should XOXO ever return in some iteration -- I work a day job that is neither technology- nor artistically-based with steady middle-class pay.  My only real relationship to the art-and-technology aims of XOXO is this website and its affiliated work and working with people who are trying to figure out how to make more and better podcasts for kids.

Lucy Bellwood at XOXO 2016 - "The Internet will not give you what you want."

One of the (perhaps unplanned) benefits of XOXO is that it is a conference that attracts people like me, people who don't entirely fit in.  As I mentioned more than once in conversations that weekend, if XOXO were a typical "industry" conference (be that tech, the arts, or any field-specific conference), there would be a clear pecking order, with "stars" on one side (probably hidden away in a green room, flown in just for their specific talk) and the rest of the attendees on the other.  But because of the cross-domain nature of XOXO, it was entirely possible to have conversations with people and have all the parties think of everyone else, "Wow, they're doing something really cool."  It also meant that there would be cases where people famous in a particular field would be anonymous in some settings.  It leveled the playing field a bit and made it a little easier to be open and welcoming.

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Dinner! (A double scoop from Ruby Jewel Ice Cream)

Before some thoughts about life and one's relationship to the world around them, I should briefly mention ice cream.  I have thought deeply about ice cream and my relationship to it and I am unreservedly pro-ice cream.  (Waves hello to Salt & Straw, Fifty Licks, and -- shown here -- Ruby Jewel.)  I have been privileged enough to attend conferences held in hotels and while I find that the food at such conferences has generally been better than their reputation might suggest, I preferred the setup at XOXO, in which a curated list of some of the best of Portland's food carts were stationed right outside the conference for attendees to pick and choose.  Yes, we paid for those foods, but the variety (and probably the quality) was better.  Also, there was ice cream.  And donuts.

Putting the final piece on our Beasts of Balance sculpture

There were more than enough ways to keep the brain engaged after the stomach was full.  As in previous years, XOXO ran a festival at night which included tabletop games, an arcade, storytelling events, and film and animation screenings.  Those events ran concurrently on the two nights, so it would have been impossible to see and do everything, but some of the highlights for me were hearing a live (and brand-new) episode of Mike Rugnetta's Reasonably Sound, a brand-new episode of Taylor Ramos & Tony Zhou's Every Frame a Painting series, successfully balancing all the beasts in the Jenga-in-reverse-for-the-digital-age game Beasts of Balance, and playing Illimat, a card game designed by Keith Baker and the Decemberists, with some of the Decembrists.  Also, on Sunday night we got to dance to Dan Deacon, which I can't recommend highly enough, having done it myself a few times.

I mention these fun and games not to make you jealous if you weren't able to attend but as a reminder to myself about the importance of, well, fun and games.  It is no less important to find time to enjoy the experiences that give you pleasure than it is to find time to work on things that give you meaning.  (Self, remember that.)

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The heart of the festival is still the conference itself, which features 16 speakers who have made a living in some way from using the internet.  One way in which the Andys I think model the "practice" behavior is in the composition of the speaker track.  Two years ago, 6 of the 16 speakers identified as women (and 10, or 11 really, as men); this year, that order was reversed, with women holding 11 of the 16 speaking slots.  If you are committed to seeing a tech world in which women aren't given a second-class position, then you have to commit to changing the corner of the world which you control, and that's something which is worth noting and commending.  (That's only a small portion of how the Andys have listened and improved -- see: child care, non-alcoholic beverages at events, I could go on and on.)

I found almost all of the talks to be compelling and with something to noodle on during and after the talk -- they will be released online and I encourage you to check them out when they're available -- but at the risk of giving short (OK, no) shrift to some compelling speakers, I want to touch on just three.

Slide ("The Internet Will Not Give You What You Want") from Lucy Bellwood's 2016 XOXO talk

The first was the concluding talk on Saturday from Portland comic artist and illustrator Lucy Bellwood.  What I remembered most from her talk is probably unfair to her -- it's her admission that she only got off of Food Stamps this year.  That admission was part of a larger talk about the difficulty of knowing how to value oneself, from the perspective of an artist.  How do you do the thing you love, and how do you put a price on it?  She didn't offer any specific answers (other than perhaps a wish that people would put a higher price on creative output), but what resonated with me, besides the honesty in admitting financial difficulties, was the centering of the question of what it means to have a good life and the tension between living your intentions and simply making ends meet when creativity is a big part of your life.  It's not that Bellwood's approach is the right or the wrong approach, but it's certainly the right question.

If Bellwood was forthcoming in admitting her financial balancing act, writer/illustrator/artisanal pencil sharpener David Rees took financial transparency one step further Sunday morning, as he outlined his income by year for more than a decade.  Rees has had a series of successes, including hosting his own TV show, Going Deep with David Rees.  Despite all that, in his presentation Rees claimed never to have earned more than $100,000 in a single year.  From one perspective, he appeared to be doing better than Bellwood, but in many ways his talk was just as dispiriting as Bellwood's -- if someone can host their own TV show and still not make more than an average engineer -- then it really does seem like there's a tension between creative output and financial security that will be hard to resolve.

And that's where the final speaker on Sunday, designer Frank Chimero, suggested a frame of reference that doesn't magically unlock financial riches for talented artists like Bellwood, Rees, or the other creators that graced the stage at the conference and festival, but does offer a different view.  Chimero referenced an interview with Krista Tippett, in which she notes the complications from conflating "vocation" with "job":

I’m very committed and fond of the language of vocation, which I think became narrowly tied to our job titles in the 20th Century. Our vocations or callings as human beings may be located in our job descriptions, but they may also be located in how we are present to whatever it is we do. It may be that your job at any given point is to make the income to feed your family. That is noble, too.

That's a little bit more than what Chimero referenced in his slide, but I think it further drives home the point Chimero made in his talk.  Creators need to work together to figure out how to help each other thrive.  That's been an animating principle behind XOXO, and will continue even if there's never another XOXO-related physical gathering.

But creators can also consider what they do creatively outside the context of how much they earn for their creative work.  That's not an argument for giving away their creative work for free -- in fact, I'd argue it's exactly the opposite.  It's recognizing that creative work has value in and of itself, before any assignment of market value.  Viewed in that way, the creative work can have significant value to the creator.  The question then becomes, how do I create a life which allows me the time and energy to create, viewing the act of creation as a vocation I'm committed to, rather than a job I need to extract value out of.

I totally recognize the privileged position I'm making this argument from, and that my status as a middle-class person with health insurance (not to mention all my other privileges as a straight white male) whose creative output is an occasional side project could make this a facile argument.  But I really believe that approaching the creative process as a calling rather than specifically a job might help some artists think what it is that feeds their soul, and how they can fit that into a life that feeds their bodies as well.

Andy McMillan and Andy Baio banter at the end of XOXO 2016

I was interviewing a couple kids musicians this week -- OK, it was Andrew and Polly -- and they mentioned that putting together one 20-minute episode of their fabulous Ear Snacks podcast takes 65 hours or more of effort.  That's a crazy-expensive episode if you judge it by the cost of their time when they write music for films or TV shows.  But the duo has, for now, decided not to try to charge money for it, feeling like doing something like putting ads on it or changing it in order to attract some sort of sponsor, would diminish its value.  They've made a decision that it has more value to them unpriced and unaltered from their vision.  It's a choice they can make from a privileged position, and their approach might mean they may never make more Ear Snacks after this season (because, c'mon, 65 HOURS AN EPISODE?!), but they've committed to living out their calling, at least for the moment.

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So thanks, Andy and Andy, for the opportunity to attend a festival which helps people think about how the internet is changing our creative lives, and what that means to our entire lives.  I suspect you would both view the analogy to church a little distasteful, but to the extent that you're helping a lot of people think about how they can relate to individuals and society as a whole, and their place within society, I think XOXO has done a lot of what church at its secular best can do.  Creative life on the internet is often still a scary and unpredictable place, but I think you've helped carve out a community that will continue to seek a path forward to make it less scary and more predictable for everyone.

Podcast Review: Ear Snacks

Ear Snacks logo cover

Well, with this the plural in "Podcast Reviews Are Now a Thing Here" is in fact true.

The Los Angeles-based kindie duo Andrew and Polly first became known to the kids music world for their melodic and occasionally quirky music, but it's their podcast Ear Snacks that is, I think, their most forward-thinking creative effort for audiences of kids.

They call it a "radical new podcast for kids," and while I tend not to believe most descriptions that try to hype the individuality of the product, in this case I think the phrase fits.  Each episode is loosely structured around a single theme -- the most recent one, Episode 9, is "Rain," but they've also covered beeps, pairs, disguises, balls, and more.  The duo (married, with a kid of their own) tackle the topic by talking with one another, playing audio clips of kids talking about it, talking with adult experts, and playing music.  The adults they talk with are sometimes scientists, but sometimes they're just people with a hobbyist's interest (like Polly's father or a friend who just really digs seahorses).  The music, well, as you'd expect, it's really good.  (The song at the end of the "Rain" podcast is one of the best kids' songs you'll hear this year.)  And all of this is wrapped into a single, well-edited whole.

The podcast is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7.  The iTunes link for the show is here (you can find it elsewhere, of course, including at the podcast's main page above).  Episodes are roughly 15-20 minutes in length, and are released roughly monthly.  (Sometimes there are much shorter bonus episodes released in between the main releases.)  Aside from a suggestion of supporting the show, perhaps by buying a t-shirt, the show is ad-free.

I recently called Ear Snacks a half-absurdist podcast for kids, and I stand by that assessment.  Yes, it features kids, and curious ones at that, and that's nothing new, but its blend of music and its deemphasis on straight-forward storytelling is certainly unique for the emerging genre.  It's a hoot.

Podcasts for Kids

"Why aren't there more podcasts for kids?" is a question that to my ears sounds like a close cousin to questions in the kids music world -- "Why isn't kids music as popular as children's books?" or "Why don't more people know about all this great music?"

It's a question that's been getting some attention recently.  This morning, The Atlantic's website published "Why Aren't There More Podcasts for Kids?," an attempt to answer that question.  The piece echoes a lot of the discussion that Nicholas Quah tackled several weeks ago for his essential weekly newsletter Hot Pod.  (Yes, you should totally sign up for the free newsletter.)  Quah's piece, in turn, was inspired by articles that podcast producer Lindsay Patterson (more on her in a minute) wrote asking that question for Current.  (She expanded a bit in a piece on Medium.)

No, I'm not going to make you read all those links, though if you'd like to -- original source material being important for some of us -- please be my guest.

And before I go any further, let me just say that if you found this piece because you're looking for recommendations for podcasts for kids and don't care about the existential issues facing this category of audio entertainment, go to the very end of this piece, and I'll give you several recommendations [Edited to add: and a link to a (reasonably) complete list of podcasts for kids].

Basically, the theories outlined in articles thus far come down to these two following:

1) Lack of historical precedent: Patterson, in particular, subscribes to this theory -- as a relatively new format in which to present entertainment, there haven't been many examples of podcasts for kids.  Perhaps this is because podcast makers started off making podcasts for others like themselves, and since relatively few 7-year-olds had microphones and editing software, there weren't many podcasts for kids

2) Sponsorship issues: I think Quah gravitated more to this explanation, proffered by Guy Raz, he of NPR and Mindy Thomas' best bud on SiriusXM's Kids Place Live Breakfast Blast Newscast.  How do you convince sponsors to underwrite programs for shows when parents might feel a bit queasy about advertising?  Where is the value for underwriters in that equation?  And if you have a reluctance to invest in advertising, that's going to make it difficult for producers -- individuals or institution -- to invest the time and money to produce a high quality podcast.  (Until kids start demanding to run Squarespace sites or send MailChimp newsletters.  Then all those problems are solved.)

Quah and I exchanged a couple e-mails on the topic when he first broached it a few weeks back, and at the time I thought that both explanations had merit.  I also thought that it'd be interesting to see whether the moves toward acquiring kids' content by entities like Netflix and Amazon would be duplicated in the on-demand audio field -- will Spotify, Audible, and Rhapsody get into the game beyond music?  Are parents going to prefer their podcasts sponsored or paid upfront, buffet-style?  (Notable for being left unstated in all these discussions, nobody's considering whether parents will want to simply purchase individual or season episodes of a podcast.)

But as I've thought about it further, I'm more convinced that something that's been touched on briefly, particularly by Patterson, is just as important, and that's how [expletive] hard it is to find good, new podcasts for kids.

3) Discovery issues: This is not a problem just for podcasts for kids, but I think the relatively small universe of quality kids' shows makes the problem that much worse.  Let's start with the worst offender: the iTunes Kids and Family podcast chart.  Imagine, if you will, that the iTunes music charts folded all songs about kids and families into the iTunes Kids and Family music chart, thereby including, perhaps Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" and Lukas Graham's "7 Years."  That would be pretty silly, right?  But that's exactly what the podcast chart reflects -- by my count, of the top 30 podcasts in that list as I'm checking on it, 20 are targeted specifically at the parents and not for the kids.  It's not like the ratio seems to get much better as you roll down the next 170 podcasts in the chart.  (Waves hi to friends of Zoogloble fighting the good fight Spare the Rock Spoil the Child and Saturday Morning Cereal Bowl.)

What are the other ten podcasts specifically for kids in the top 30?  One Taylor Swift podcast, a Sesame Street video podcast, a Nickelodeon video podcast, and 3 story podcasts.  That leaves 4 podcasts in the top 30 that are full-fledged audio productions that don't echo something you (or your kid) might find elsewhere: a Focus on the Family-produced podcast that "combines the faith lessons parents appreciate with characters and stories that kids love!," something from the Story Pirates, and 2 science podcasts: Lindsay Patterson's podcast Tumble, produced with her husband Marshall Escamilla, and Brains On!, the brainchild of 3 public radio producers and released via NPR.

Compare that list with other top-podcast charts in iTunes for other genres, which are filled with podcasts I've heard of (and, in some cases, actually heard) and it's clear that people are doing a terrible job finding and spreading the word about good podcasts for kids.  And it's not like there are other sources filling the gap.  NPR?  Their NPR podcast list suffers from the same definitional issue iTunes has, with only Brains On! being specifically for kids, and their fancy earbud.fm podcast recommender doesn't even have a kids and family subcategory.  Googling "best podcasts for kids" yields a dispiriting short list of lists, and a dispiriting number of distinct, made-for-kids podcasts on those lists.  Patterson's newsletter for Tumble does occasionally feature podcast recommendations for kids, but it's fairly new.

There could be more great podcasts for kids and kids and families (two separate categories) out there, but it's incredibly difficult to find them.  And without the critical mass that might propel them into slightly broader consciousness -- only the top 4 in the Kids and Family charts place in the top 200 of all podcasts at the moment -- it's going to be hard to get more folks to think of "kids podcasts" as a thing, as something to recommend to families and as something to think about creating.

Thinking of "kids _____" as a thing is one of those concepts that kids music as a genre struggled with for a long time.  Ten years ago, when there was a wave of attention to the artists who started around the turn of the century -- Dan Zanes, Laurie Berkner, Justin Roberts -- it seemed like not a week would go by without a newspaper article introducing the genre as if somebody would say, "Did you know there are people who make music for kids?  And it's good?"

Thankfully, kids music is mostly beyond that, even if the genre hasn't fully punched through to the national consciousness in the way that the general public accepts without question the existence and usefulness of books and TV made for kids.  Podcasts for kids are at an earlier development stage.

4) Podcasting tools: Again, this is not a problem limited to podcasts for kids, but I think that the target audience for kids podcasts suffers this problem even more.  It is not necessarily easy for adults to figure out how to listen to podcasts or any on-demand (non-music) audio in the way that adults know how to find TV or books.  (I know -- this is not news to anyone.)  That obviously puts some pressure on the parents who are looking for something to listen to with their preschooler as they're driving around town.  But presumably a parent who's interested in podcasts for kids knows how to get podcasts generally, so this is no greater technological problem for this genre than for podcasting generally.

Imagine how hard it would be for an 8-year-old, though.  The 8-year-old probably doesn't have their own iPhone, but if they did (or their own iPod touch, etc.), no doubt their parents don't want to be constantly checking different websites or podcatchers to try to find a podcast for their kid.  And the kid, who wants some degree of autonomy, particularly as they reach double-digits, age-wise, may not get that autonomy.  It's the walled garden problem of video -- I've seen plenty of startups attempt to create a safe kids-only video area, but I'm not sure that any of them have been fully successful, or at the very least, none that don't have some tie to a broader entity (a "Nick" app or Netflix's and Amazon Instant Video's kids' sections, for example).

Beyond these other problems, I'm not sure that there's enough variety in kids podcasting.  As I read these kids-podcasting articles, I kept thinking about Ear Snacks, a delightfully loopy series of shows from kids musicians Andrew & Polly.  Sure, there are the occasional science-based conversations, but it is the closest thing I know of to a half-absurdist podcast for kids.  And it's totally unique.

Where are the kids comedy podcasts?  Why in the world don't The Listies have a podcast?  Why in the world isn't (wasn't) there a Chicken Weebus podcast?  Where are the actual kid-friendly radio hours like the Radio Adventures of Doctor Floyd?  (There are good, specific reasons for those, to be sure, but those are examples.)

Having said all that, I've written a lot here, and I should really press "Publish" on this piece and get into the world.  Two additional thoughts:

1) Once kids music became a "thing" again, there were a lot of folks who got into the genre who made music that was, well, not very good.  Assuming that kids podcasts take the same route, we may see a bunch of crappy podcasts for kids over the next few years (along with a bunch of really good podcasts).  That's why discovery tools are going to be so important -- nobody wants to hear their first podcast for kids and have it be a boring guy droning into a microphone or conversing with middling audio quality over Skype.  (I have experience producing some of those myself.)  One of the difficult things musicians have to learn is that not everybody is good singing songs for kids, and I have no doubt that some podcasters will learn for themselves that they're not very good making stories for kids.

2) These days, recorded music is mostly the calling card to get fans interested in seeing live music or supporting the musician in some other way.  Musicians are, generally, not pleased with this development, but I don't think Spotify or Pandora or Rhapsody et al. are going away.  Podcasts are even more isolated.  So if I have one piece of advice for kids podcast makers is that you have to get out in the world and do live shows.  Other podcasts for adults have done this - Radiolab, Pop Culture Happy Hour, Song Exploder, the list is long - but it's time that kids podcasts enter the fray.

If you've read this far, thanks.  Really.  If you have any thoughts or responses, please please please offer them below or send me an e-mail.  I'm intending to keep listening to podcasts for kids and continue to think about the kids' media space and would love to hear other perspectives.

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So, as promised, let's end these rambling thoughts with a list of recommended podcasts for kids.  I'm excluding podcasts that may have some interest for those listeners who don't yet have their drivers' license or who may even be in elementary school -- certainly Welcome To Night Vale, Radiolab, This American Life, and 99% Invisible all could attract the interest of a certain (brainy) youthful audience.  But they're not made with kids in mind.  These are.  Also, I've excluded items you can't find via iTunes' podcast link.  I know that the on-demand world is a big one -- you can listen to those Guy Raz Breakfast Blasts, for example, via the Soundcloud website (and presumably their app).  But that seems like an awful lot of work, and, as should be fairly obvious, making it even more work is not what we're going for.

[Edited to add: Now I've gone ahead and compiled a long list of podcasts for kids.  Feel free to start with the ones listed below, then explore further!]

Anyway, if you've got more suggestions, please leave 'em in the comments, or send me a direct e-mail -- I'm always happy to expand this podcast world a little wider...

Brains On! and Tumble: It doesn't feel quite right combining two podcasts together, but the truth is they're both science podcasts that take kids' questions about science and get kids to answer them.  They're both very good, so if you're looking for science-based podcasts, particularly for older elementary school students, try 'em both.  My sense is that Tumble is the slightly more informal-sounding, the Radiolab to Brains On!'s This American Life, but, like I said, try 'em both. (Also note: I threw in a token donation to Brains On!'s recent Kickstarter campaign, which had more than 1,000 supporters.)

Ear Snacks: this, by the way, is excellent for preschool listeners, an area served very well by kids music but very poorly by kids podcasting.

Short & Curly: ethics for kids, a description which sounds like it could be bland or didactic (or worse: both), but which this new podcast from the Australian Broadcasting Company, makes fairly entertaining and not didactic at all.  Appropriate for elementary schoolers of all ages.

The Radio Adventures of Doctor Floyd: Like those radio serial adventures of yore, these are entertaining, pun-filled, and with a bunch of funny voices.  Think of it as The Thrilling Adventure Hour but targeted at 8-year-olds and without the in-joke learning curve that made (to me, at least) Thrilling too much of an effort.

Music discovery: Spare the Rock Spoil the Child, Saturday Morning Cereal Bowl, OWTK Kid's Music Monthly: Regular readers don't need any introduction to these podcasts, but if you're looking for the kids music equivalent of the indie-attitude podcasts plugged here, these will fit right in.

Best Kids Music of 2015: Top 30 Songs

Developing a list of my 30 favorite songs from the past year is probably the most foolish ranking I attempt here every year.  The number of albums to consider is large, but it is finite.  Multiply that number of albums by 10 or 12, however, to consider the number of songs, and we're talking thousands of songs to consider.  And, as I noted last year, a list ranking favorite songs is "ephemeral, subject to the whims of a particular moment.  More than that, it probably tends toward the poppy, upbeat, and lively."  I feel confident, though, these 30 songs, listed alphabetically, are among the best that kids music offered us in the past year.  ("Year," as always, defined as Oct. 1, 2014 through Sept. 30, 2015, though with particular songs no doubt that range should be considered more guideline than firm window.)

Anyway, I've combined these into a handy Spotify playlist found at the bottom of this list (click here if you're already in Spotify).  Enjoy!

"If a Sandwich Was a Sandwich” - Turkey Andersen

"Grapes" - Andrew & Polly

"Use a Contraction" - The Bazillions

“Owl” - Big Block Singsong

 "Sad Baby” - Caspar Babypants

“La Golondrina” - Sonia De Los Santos

"Cuantos Tacos (The Taco Song)” - Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band

“Loving Cup” - Cat Doorman

"Kitty Wampus" - Duke Otherwise

"Action, Friends, Action" - Funky Mama

"Tomorrow Is a Chance to Start Over" - Hilary Grist

"Cakenstein" - Gustafer Yellowgold

“It’s Gotta Rain (If You Want a Rainbow)” - The Harmonica Pocket

“If I Were a Bird” - Charlie Hope

"Sloop John B. (feat. Jesse Wagner)" - Josh and the Jamtones

"Breakfast Club (feat. Carly Ciaricchio)" - Tim Kubart

“To the Woods” - Molly Ledford & Billy Kelly

"Hello, Goodbye, Shalom" - Joanie Leeds and the Nightlights

"The Start of Things” - Alison Faith Levy

"Refreshments On Neptune” - Todd McHatton

"The Way We Gets Down” - Mista Cookie Jar & the Chocolate Chips

“Together” - Moona Luna (feat. Secret Agent 23 Skidoo)

"Give Some, Get Some” - Papa Crow

“Indoor Picnic” - The Pop Ups

"Turkey in the Straw" - Red Yarn

"You Were Meant To Be" - Renee and Friends (feat. Glen Phillips)

"I Like to Ride My Bike” - Rock 'n' Rainbow

"Minnesota" - Rocknoceros

“All I Want” - Vered

"Get Happy" - The Verve Pipe

Christmas and Holiday Kids Music 2015 (Songs and Videos)

To go along with my reviews of 2015 Christmas and holiday kids music, here are some videos and singles for your further enjoyment.  I'll be adding songs and videos as they're released, so feel free to check back throughout the season (or shout out the new songs I've missed).

First, let's hear from Laurie Berkner, who has a new video for "Children Go Where I Send Thee," a track which appeared on 2012's A Laurie Berkner Christmas and the just released Laurie Berkner's Favorite Classic Kids' Songs.  Pretty simple -- it features Berkner and regular Berkner bassist (and kindie musician in his own right) Brady Rymer and a bunch of children dancing around happily.

Laurie Berkner (with Brady Rymer) - "Children Go Where I Send Thee" [YouTube]

Next is a song I've already posted the video for, but it definitely merits a repeat mention, and that's "L.A. Christmas" from Andrew & Polly featuring Mista Cookie Jar.  It's a sweet, sunny groove with just enough bells and holiday spirit to make it a nice alternative to a lot of holiday music.

Andrew & Polly and Mista Cookie Jar - "L.A. Christmas" [YouTube]

Of course there are Christmas-themed bands.  The Yule Logs from California have four holiday albums under their belt, and have just released their fifth such album, Up All Night.  The title track is a jangly bit of celebratory nonsense.  The band isn't really a kids band, but this song and video passes the parental test.

Moving from L.A. to N.J., Jason Didner and the Jungle Gym Jam offer up a little bit of The Boss -- Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band -- in their appealing single (and track from their forthcoming 2016 album) "Summertime Santa."  Apparently the West Coast isn't the only coast that can offer up a beach-based Christmas celebration.

Speaking of songs featuring Santa mashups, Montana's The Salamanders move out from the beach onto the sea with their holiday single "Pirate Santa."  As with "Summertime Santa," this is hardly a serious take on the holiday season, but combining "Yo Ho Ho" with "Ho Ho Ho" is a pretty good idea.  (The last line, is also a darn good pun.)

And there's no reason why we can't have multiple versions of the same song in a single year, right?  Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem offer up their own take on "Children Go Where I Send Thee" that's a little more pensive and rootsier than Berkner and Rymer's take.  Gotta believe that one of these will be to your family's taste.

We're in the midst of Hanukkah as I add this track, the latest from Jewish-themed rockers The Macaroons.  This year's sing-along track, "Jews All Over the World," does give a shout-out to Hanukkah, but it's got an advantage in that it'd probably sound just as good in May as it does now.  Try saying that about "Last Christmas."

This last embed isn't kindie, but as with most Christmas streams, it's certainly family-friendly.  It's a Spotify playlist from Universal Music's vast library.  At more than 4 hours (!) in length, there's plenty of room for the classics (just look at the first 5 songs in that embed stream) and new songs (e.g., Carly Rae Jepsen's take on Wham's "Last Christmas").

Other Songs/Videos/Album Streams

The Big Cheese Band - "The Christmas Crocodile" [YouTube]

Rockin' Robin & the Magical Tree - "Sparkly Christmas Things" [YouTube]

The Little Ditties - "S'no Day Like It" [Bandcamp]

Andrew & Polly - Other Days [Bandcamp]

Rain for Roots - Waiting Songs [Bandcamp]