It has been quite a year. And we are finishing it off with a bang. This month, we are honored to feature new music from The Swell Season featuring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova and from Bassekou Kouyate and his group Ngoni Ba. Both of these groups make such beautiful soulful music - real music from such a real place - that it is almost a disservice to try to limit their creativity by capturing it with words. So instead, I'd rather tell a quick story about The Frames - Glen's original band.

When I first started working at Ultimate Ears, I was a bit star-struck and overwhelmed by the newness of everything that I was seeing. I was fielding calls from all of my favorite childhood musicians. I had the keys to backstage. It was a dream come true really. So one day I took an email from a group out of Ireland I had never heard of. We got on well and the musician offered to send me a CD. Hey - not a bad job benefit - free CD's from overseas. Well, it turns out that the CD was called SETLIST - a live album from a band called The Frames. I loved it and it soon became my favorite traveling music. There was a song called Revelate and it just did something to me. I can't explain it. But it was moving.

Years went by and I'd still pull that album out with fondness and think back to how I got it. And then I knew it was time to change around my job position in the company. It was time for me to move on and on my way out, I ended up swinging by the Coachella music festival entertaining friends from Guitar Center. And I hadn't looked at all the bands playing and I walked by one of the side stages and I heard Revelate. The Frames were playing live - and man - they sounded even better than on the album and that song moved me even more than ever before and I knew I had made the right decision.

And now, a few more years have gone by and Glen, the singer of this obscure Irish band The Frames just took a Grammy for his beautiful work he did with the soundtrack to the movie Once. And I'm in a perfect place that I could not dream up, and now I get to showcase this perfect music on this program that has grown from nothing into something very special. Life just moves in funny ways. Not a bad way to end a year.

Happy holidays and seasons greetings.