Downloads

Surfing the Web for new music, video and MP3 downloads can be a serious time investment. Picks from Times staff and contributors will help take the drag out of click-and-drag music choices. Some downloads may contain explicit lyrics. All are free, except as noted.

-- Chris Lee

“Wizard in Winter”

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

www.snopes.com/photos/arts/xmaslights.asp

Talk about an orchestral maneuver in the dark: Electrical engineer Carson Williams spent two months and $10,000 sequencing the 25,000 Christmas lights that festoon his Mason, Ohio, home and surrounding shrubbery to flash in time to this baroque Yuletide composition.

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“If You Want”

Tom Vek

startimerecords.com/tomvek.html

Rank 24-year-old multi-instrumentalist Vek’s singular brand of pulsating post-punk/funk (on effective display in “Want”) among the year’s most authentic examples of garage rock. He recorded his album “We Have Sound” in London, in his father’s garage.

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“Maybe You Can Owe Me”

Architecture in Helsinki

www.emusic.com/album/10859/10859111.html?fref=149808

The eight-member Australian art-rock collective layers electro beats and male-female chorus arrangements to achieve a kind of symphonic pop that has drawn comparisons to Arcade Fire. (Subscription required.)

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“Touch It”

Busta Rhymes

www.bustarhymes.com

Busta’s embrace of “less is more” encompasses both music -- Swizz Beatz produced this song’s evocatively minimal beat, shot through with robot voices and electronic bass throbs -- and personal grooming: The rapper recently cut off his dreadlocks.

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“Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”

Maroon 5

www.amnesty.org/noise

The platinum-selling pop quintet’s fairly straight-ahead (but nonetheless rousing) take on John Lennon’s 1971 pacifist Christmas carol appears on “Make Some Noise,” a compilation of Lennon covers enabled by Yoko Ono’s donation of his solo songbook to benefit Amnesty International. Cost: 99 cents.

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“Rock ‘n’ Roll Queen”

The Subways

www.iTunes.com

Nevermind the comparisons between singer-bassist Mary-Charlotte Cooper and the Pixies’ Kim Deal. The British indie trio’s punchy second single is an exercise in gritty Detroit-style rawk worthy of Iggy and the Stooges. Cost: 99 cents.