Welsh carols, Derbyshire ballads and Cajun drinking songs: the best folk music for Christmas and winter

As the Unthanks release a new collection of wintry folk, we pick out other seasonal albums full of variously warm, sparkling and sharp songcraft

A brand new bumper double album of winter songs kicks off this list by the increasingly experimental singing sisters from Tyneside. Well-known carols and traditional tunes sit around lesser-known pearls such as Middlesbrough singer Graeme Miles’s gorgeous evocation of weather and wonder Dark December, Hugh Lupton and Chris Wood’s heartbreaking Bleary Winter, and parting song Dear Companions, with the band backed by a choir of 60 from their popular residential singing courses.