This year, the band who brought you Christmas on Mars in 2007 found some ingenious ways of stuffing fans’ stockings outside the usual, gift-wrapped box.

With CD sales continuing to plummet and die death upon fiery death, bands must find ways of producing and selling content outside of the traditional one-album-every-few-years concept.

And few bands do that as well as the Flaming Lips.

In October, the Oklahoma band released its 12th studio album, Embryonic. A weird, experimental break from the recent, poppier releases of the late ’90s, early ’00s, this double-CD dynamo contained lots of improv-heavy space jams and instrumentals. Critics and fans of the group’s psychedelic early days loved it.

In addition to selling the album digitally with bonus tracks on the iTunes store (plus your typical retail version), the band offered an Embryonic deluxe edition box that was covered in fur. In addition to selling it through the band’s site, they peddled it at a pop-up store in L.A. the week of the album’s release, alongside a string of live performances.

Then there was the Dark Side of the Moon project. Purely to have additional content for iTunes, the Lips and their friends Stardeath & White Dwarfs (a band led by the nephew of Lips frontman Wayne Coyne) hit the studio to record a complete cover version of the original Pink Floyd album. It was released December 22 on iTunes, and we’re downloading it as we write this entry (iTunes store link).

And then, also in time for Christmas, there was the totally strange-o Silver Trembling Fetus Ornament. Wayne explains:

And finally, the band, or at least Stephen and Wayne, dropped by the studios of Static to knock out a few Christmas classics in their own special way. Enjoy. (More here)

Merry Christmas, ye fearless freaks!