There’s a new kid on the holiday entertainment block. Striking 12 at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage, featuring the New York trio GrooveLily, is an odd but delightful hybrid in two parts: a mini-pop opera followed by a mini-concert set of original tunes.

Written by keyboardist Brendan Milburn, Rachel Sheinkin and electric violinist Valerie Vigoda, the first act is a clever and quite seamless merging of GrooveLily’s original songs with a slightly updated version of the old Hans Christian Andersen tale The Little Match Girl.

In this version, the match girl (Vigoda) is selling light bulbs to chase away Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), and she knocks on the door of grouchy contemporary guy Brendan (Milburn), busy ignoring two New Year’s Eve party invitations.

Brendan shoos the light bulb girl away, but regrets the move as he reads the Andersen story. (Should you recall that the original Little Match Girl is something less than cheery holiday fare, fear not: this is “the Hollywood version.”)

Interspersed are the group’s original songs — a few hauntingly lovely, like Vigoda’s opener about the way the (east coast) city looks blanketed in snow at Christmastime, and the affecting “Can’t Go Home.”

Some of the songs are cleverly descriptive, like “This Is the Sound of a Party You Don’t Get To Go To,” but most are upbeat toe-tappers. The style is difficult to categorize and varies from fairly standard pop to lyric showcases à la Cole Porter (one uses homophonic word play like “down the stairs, stare them down” and “keep my grip, grip my keys”), to zippy patter songs reminiscent of Gilbert & Sullivan. Milburn does a version of the latter that sounds almost like rap in double time.

GrooveLily founder and classically trained electric violinist Vigoda shows a lot of versatility as she moves from a plaintive, slow sound to extremely fast bowing to a technique that makes the instrument sound very much like a guitar. She is also the lead singer, with a straight-on, clear tone that lets the songs speak for themselves.

The song set in the second half further underlines the point that GrooveLily’s strength is in its lyrics. Just the titles will give you the idea: “Screwed-up People Make Great Art,” “No Room In Your Bag (for Regret)” and drummer Gene Lewin’s “I Just Want a Million Bucks.”

If you’re looking for a place to relax for a few hours in between shopping forays, Striking 12 will strike the right note.

Striking 12 plays Tues.-Sun. through Dec. 31 at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage in Balboa Park. Tickets for a special New Year’s Eve show at 10:00 p.m. are $95. Call (619) 234-5623 for more information.