HO HO WHO: Oh, you know The Killers. They exploded out of the gate with 2004’s Hot Fuss and have been reliably serving up dance-rock with big swells of synth and stadium choruses since, though none of their subsequent releases have come close to rivaling startlingly assured debut. The same goes for the charity singles The Killers have unwrapped for five consecutive Christmases now — a lovely, generous custom, but none of the subsequent tunes have lodged themselves in The Sleigher’s brain as stubbornly as the first of them, “A Great Big Sled,” did waaaaaaay back in 2006. Anyway, they’ve taken a brief hiatus from their current hiatus to make the latest one, “Boots.” As in prior years, they’re selling it on iTunes, with the proceeds going to (RED), the organization founded to fight HIV and AIDS in Africa.

ARE WE HUMAN?: Like so many Killerz jamz, “Boots” places The Sleigher in the awkward position of wanting to let the song’s shameless grandiloquence course through him and howl along, only to discover that the semiotic curtains don’t quite match the drapes, as it were. (Um, the lyrics are pretty ordinary, is what The Sleigher trying to say.) “A smile below each nose, and above each chin” is helpfully, eerily specific, but the rest of the chorus cheerfully raids the collective Christmas-carol image cupboard of mom in the kitchen, frosted window panes, snowball meles, piles of presents.

OR ARE WE DANCER?: One more reference to cinnamon candles and this thing would’ve been a candidate for The Right Stuff’s Slow Jams Christmas series.

HOLIDAY CHEER FACTOR: 6.641/10, assuming that “A Great Big Sled” is a 10, and 2008’s “Joseph, Better You than Me” is a 1.

LISTEN — AND WATCH: