As mentioned, London’s deary have had quite a good year, the high point probably being a toss up between releasing quite an excellent debut EP or playing to thousands when opening for Slowdive’s UK dates. But they weren’t stopping there, instead offering fans a final holiday gift in the form of a dreamy cover of The Pretenders’ own Christmas classic “2000 Miles” on a limited edition split-7″ with a track by Slowdive drummer Simon Scott’s Three Quarter Skies – he mastered their EP – on the flip side. It’s one of my favourite seasonal songs – and favourite Pretenders tunes – so a straight up cover would have done just fine but they’ve gone ahead and deconstructed it a little while maintaining its spirit. Lovely.

And just because, here’s a pretty well-recorded fan video of the band performing the song live a couple weeks ago.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, happy statutory holiday to those who don’t!