Yo Gabba Gabba welcomes indie band Cults onto their show to sing about hot chocolate.  Happy Holidays from everyone here at WTSR and remember to always open your mind.

Just a few events to keep an ear out for in the coming weeks!

We’ve also officially switched over to our Winter Break 2011-2012 schedule, which will be in effect until January 17th.

- Make sure you listen to Ms Sue Ms Sue on Christmas and New Year’s Eve from 9pm-1am (as long as weather permits!). Make sure you listen in. House music still lives.

We’ve already looked at the top 100 most played albums of the year and some honorable mentions and now it’s time to take a look at some of our staff’s favorite albums of 2011. These are some of the best and most influential new albums and all deserve a listen. When making the list, we tried to include a wide variety of music that accurately illustrated some of the most important trends in music this year.

Thanks for listening to WTSR and keep listening throughout 2012 to open your mind to more great music!

The following list is in alphabetical order and we’ve provided a number of different ways to listen to the album!

We’ve already detailed the Top Albums of the year by most plays on the station, but we thought we’d go further this year and select some albums that the WTSR staff thought should be highlighted. This year has been an amazing year for music. The following albums didn’t quite make our top albums list, but are worthy of a mention. Many of these releases are debuts whose follow-ups are highly anticipated in hopes that they will build on what they started.

The following list is in alphabetical order and we’ve provided a number of different ways to listen to the album!

Take a look through our list and keep an eye out for our Top Albums of 2011 list coming soon!

Taxes is an unsigned indie rock band from San Francisco whose debut LP was released in late 2011 and is now available on iTunes. Take a listen below and download one of their songs here.

- Rachel Chlebowski, WTSR Website Staff