THE RAMONES: "Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)," plus Joey's cover of "What a Wonderful World," for Twofer Tuesday.

NEW RELEASES: Great Lake Swimmers, Nosound and more, plus Christmas albums from the Beach Boys, Neil Diamond, Sinatra and Spector are streaming this week via Spinner.

LAURA VEIRS is advance streaming her July Flame album via NPR.

FREE ENERGY did the four free songs thing for Daytrotter, one previously unreleased.

2009's TOP 12 NEW DISCOVERIES, according to KEXP.

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE: "Killing in the Name" breaks Simon Cowell's four-year stranglehold on the UK's Christmas Number One.

YEAR IN REVIEW, courtesy of Aquarium Drunkard, with plenty o' streaming tracks.

NOTES ON THE NOUGHTIES: In this decade of webbed connectivity and media supersaturation, the divide between underground and overground has steadily dissolved.

TOM WAITS talks music and acting with The Globe and Mail.

LIKE A ROCK: Bob Seger's Greatest Hits is officially the decade's best-selling catalog album in the US, according to SoundScan.

THE LEAST ESSENTIAL ALBUMS of 2009, according to The A.V. Club.

BRITTANY MURPHY likely died of natural causes.  Murphy was taking prescription meds for flu-like symptoms she had been experiencing for several days.  Her husband told hospital staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center he did not want an autopsy, but there will be one.  The actress had been fired from her last film just two weeks ago, and had lost consciosuness during shooting. People reports on her "inner demons."

CARRIE UNDERWOOD and Ottawa Senator hockey player Mike Fisher are engaged.

TILA TEQUILA claims she is serving as a surrogate mother for her brother and his wife.

TIGER WOODS has reportedly set sail from Florida.

JESSICA SIMPSON screams through an ear candling. Video at the link.

TOM CRUISE is being sued for allegedly hiring notorious P.I. Anthony Pellicano to illegally wiretap a magazine editor's phone.

CATHERINE ZETA-JONES had a wardrobe malfunction on Broadway.

JACK BAUER INTERROGATES SANTA: The following events occurred when not even a crere was stirring.

IRAN's president is dismissing a newly revealed secret document that purportedly shows Iran has been trying to develop a crucial component of a nuclear bomb, calling it a fabrication concocted by the US government. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of mourners turned the funeral procession of the country's most senior dissident cleric into an anti-government protest.

OM NOM NOM: A Brief History.

BILLY THE KID: A goat is behind bars in a German police cell after he was 'arrested' for disrupting traffic.

A BABY BELUGA WHALE was born at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium.

HUNTING WILD BOAR dressed in animal skins ends badly.

MEERKATS mocked for the holidays. As if most families don't have similar home pics.