Of all the “oh man, that’s a bummer” musical dissolutions, the quick one that befell Battle of Mice after their first (and only) album, A Day of Nights, was especially pointed. I’ve always dug Made Out of Babies in a middling kind of way, but vocalist Julie Christmas‘ performance on that Battle of Mice record was landmark. Just fantastic. One can only hope she puts the same fervor into her first solo album, which is due out this Fall. Ever illuminating, the PR wire informs thusly on that and other Christmas‘ other projects:

Brooklyn‘s Julie Christmas has been mysteriously under the radar as of late. But far from disappearing, the emerging singer/songwriter has been busier than ever. Christmas is scheduled to release her first solo record, The Bad Wife, this fall. More details about the album are forthcoming, but “July 31st,” a song from the pending release, is featured on the soundtrack for Paramount film, Wrong Turn at Tahoe, starring Harvey Keitel and Cuba Gooding, Jr. A video to promote the album is in production.

“I use sounds to express feelings and ideas that I am too clumsy to get across with words alone,” explains Christmas. “Working with amazing visual artists — people who speak in images — gets me one step closer to really communicating with anyone nuts enough to listen.”

Currently, Christmas is also collaborating with Nix Turner, renowned illustrator of worldwide counterculture icon, Emily the Strange, to create a book titled The Scribbles and Scrapes of Amy Anyone: A Multiple Personality Autobiography. Christmas wrote the story and is working on music for the release of an accompanying CD, which features a tone signaling the reader to turn the page.

In addition, the singer recently worked on the soundtrack for a French indie film Le Debut, in which a young couple resorts to infanticide when faced with the challenges of poverty, depression and parenthood. Christmas’s band, Made Out of Babies, is currently writing their fourth full-length album, scheduled to be released in the Spring of 2011. Live shows and exhibitions with visual artists are being arranged.