Dum Dum Girls burned briefly but brightly in the early-2010s: an all-girl Indie-rock band with impeccable influences (they were named for both an Iggy Pop song and a Vaselines album), Dum Dum Girls seamlessly melded the love-sick earnestness of ’60s girl-groups with the reverb-heavy guitar-work of ’80s Alternative. Yet though they lasted less than a decade, their oeuvre can still be divided into two cleanly distinct periods.

This first era, running from their start as a bedroom project for Kristen Gundred in 2008 till the SubPop release of their first LP I Will Be in 2010, Dum Dum girls were still very much a proto-Punk Band. Indeed, the one Christmas song they released from this period (recorded in collaboration with Kristen’s then-husband Brandon Welchez of Crocodiles), is representative of their sound at the time: “Merry Xmas, Baby (Please Don’t Die).”

Could’ve been an early Sonic Youth B-side.

Yet then in 2011 (and lasting till their breakup in 2016), Dum Dum Girls abruptly expanded their guitar sound into a much more Jesus and Mary Chain-style reverb, with much stronger vocal performances to match (the “He Gets Me High” EP being perhaps their most representative release of this era). In keeping with their whole ’80s throwback vibe, they even began dabbling in synth-pop–as seen in the one Holiday song they released from this period: “On Christmas.”

Yet though both tracks (released only three years apart, mind you) are vastly different in sound and execution, what they both share in common is a sense of heartbreak under-girding the Christmas celebrations–for a suicidally-depressed lover on the first track, and for a long-lost old flame on the second.

Such, naturally, is not an original thought: old seasonal standards like “We Need a Little Christmas” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” are also quite explicitly about how we indulge in Holiday festivities to help us cope with the horrors of the world, not ignore them. It is entirely apropos that Dum Dum Girls, in their slavish devotion to Indie/Punk tradition, would be equally slavish to the Christmas music tradition of fusing together the Merry with the Melancholy.

But then, isn’t that just Christmas generally? We celebrate unabashedly the birth of Christ, even as we already know that his story ends with his brutal torture and execution; the shadow of the cross is already cast over the manger in Bethlehem. He was the light that shined in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not—but still the darkness is there. We likewise throw up our brightest lights and merriest festivities this time of year not in spite of, but because of, the surrounding darkness.