Duncan Sheik's seasonal soundtrack

Though it's been a couple years since Hilton Head Island native Duncan Sheik has performed on a local stage, music from the Grammy award-winning composer will be playing in several Lowcountry homes over the holidays.

At 8 p.m. Wednesday on NBC, original songs from Sheik will provide the soundtrack to a new animated holiday special called "Little Spirit: Christmas in New York."

Find out why Sheik said some of the music might put him on this year's "naughty list," when he'll be releasing a new album and more.

Question. How did you get involved with "Little Spirit"?

Answer. My really good friend is a director from Mexico City. His name is Leopoldo Gout. We were actually trying to make some music videos together a few years ago, and it didn't work out, but we remained friends and then he wrote and produced and directed this animation special for a company called Curious Pictures.

Leopoldo called me, gave me the script and said, "I want you to do the music for 'Little Spirit,' but I don't want to you to do the typical, saccharine sweet cartoon music for kids. I want it to be much more hip and kind of rock 'n' roll. Like a modern, cool version of what a holiday animation special could be." So I said yes.

It's kind of a really great holiday story, because it has a very positive message and story about the goodness that is there in humanity, but it has a more general spiritual outlook as opposed to a particularly Christian one. It kind of embraces all different faiths, which I think at this day and age is a very important thing to do. It's great for kids, but adults will find another layer of meaning, too.

Q. I also got the impression that it's an ode to New York as well and not just the holidays. Is that right?

A. It is. Leopoldo is a young director from Mexico City who came to New York, and the city really embraced him, so it's kind of like a microcosm of his story, saying how you can come to New York from wherever in the world and find your place here. This is a city that really welcomes people and has for centuries.

Q. Obviously, this material is a departure from previous projects of yours, so what was your process in coming up with the music for this soundtrack?

A. I just kind of wrote a few songs initially that were kind of alternative rock songs, and then I took some of those themes and some of those melodies and chord changes and kind of deconstructed them. That became a lot of the material for the kind of underscore that happens throughout the show.

For example, in "The Graduate," you've got all of those Simon & Garfunkel songs. You know the songs, but then throughout the movie you just hear instrumental acoustic guitar versions of the songs. That becomes the cue. That's a similar approach to what I did for "Little Spirit."

It's really not a lot of holiday music, but there's some. It's funny because NBC was asking to have a lot more Christmas music, but Leopoldo -- I think to his credit -- was trying to protect me from having to do too much of that. We snuck it in there in different ways.

Part of the show is this Little Spirit, who is a little creature that jumps into Christmas trees and travels through these wormholes and pops out of other Christmas trees. So when he goes into the wormhole, I had my friend, who is this amazing pianist, come in and play all these kind of traditional Christmas songs like, "Good King Wenceslas." Then we put like crazy, psychedelic guitar sounds all over this traditional piano Christmas music. We were maybe a little bit naughty in terms of how we treated it.

Q. Is it kind of surreal to know it's going to be shown along with those old holiday specials that you grew up watching?

A. That's what I kind of love about it. You always hope that you're going to do something that becomes part of the perennial Christmas shows that come on TV. You never know if it's going to happen, but hopefully 20 years from now they'll be showing "Little Spirit" along with "Frosty the Snowman" and everything else that was made 30 or 40 years ago.

Q. Tell me about the tour you're on now. Are you promoting an upcoming album?

A. We did a three-week tour of the East Coast, and now we're on a little break. My new record actually comes out in January, which is called "Whisper House." It's actually a ghost story set in World War II. We'll go back on tour at the beginning of February and tour for another five or six weeks around the rest of America.

Q. So what are you doing for the holidays? Any plans to come to Hilton Head?

A. Yeah, I'll be home for Christmas and a few extra days, so I'll see everyone at Charley's (Crab) or on the golf course. I'd love to come back and play on Hilton Head, but it's tricky finding a good venue as a one-night-only thing. Whenever I get invited to play, I always do.