Yes, yes, it's already De-bloody-cember. Xmas albums are onsale. Festive lights have been up for two months. Elf is on the telly schedule. Supermarkets are blaring out Christmas anthems. People are queuing for presents (or at least waiting in for online deliveries) and the annual flurry of end of year lists are already piling up. Before we announce our albums of the year, we thought we'd spend twelve days building up to it with lists and give aways. Partly as a tease but mostly because we're about more than some semi-arbitrary ordered list.

Over the next 12 days we'll reveal our Lost 11 albums of '11, the most read features this year, our reviews of the year, our editor's favourite things he's read on DiS and elsewhere, 2011 in photos, staff mixtapes, reader's playlists; we'll also share a daily giveaway over on our Facebook featuring a mixture of free downloads and awesome prizes, plus we'll have the most read threads of the year, find out what some of our favourite acts were listening to this year, catch up with some of our bands of the year including Wild Beasts and St Vincent, plus some of our people of the year including documentary maker Adam Curtis and comedian Tim Minchin...

For those of you who like a schedule, here's the rough timing of things:

Mon 5th December: Lost 11 of ‘11 #11: Wave Pictures
Tues 6th: Lost 11 of ‘11 #10: Craft Spells + DiS Editor's Songs of the Year
Weds 7th: Lost 11 of ‘11 #9
Thurs 8th: Lost 11 of ‘11 #8 + Wild Beasts feature
Fri 9th: Lost 11 of ‘11 #7 + Debut albums of the Year
Sat 10th: Lost 11 of ‘11 #6 + Small Labels of the Year
Sun 11th: Lost 11 of ‘11 #5 + Tim Minchin interview
Mon 12th: Lost 11 of ‘11 #4 + Albums of year 75-51 + List of All Staff Number 1s
Tues 13th: Lost 11 of ‘11 #3 + Albums of the Year 50-21 + Dom Gourlay’s Gigs of the Year
Weds 14th: Lost 11 of ‘11 #2 + Albums of the Year 20-6
Thurs 15th: Lost 11 of ‘11 # 1+ Albums of the Year 5-1 + 2011’s Most Read Editorial
Fri 16th: Lost 11 of ‘11 #1 + Wendy Roby’s Singles of the Year + Your Songs of the Year mixtapes

So, yeah, that gives you a rough idea of what is planned. Plus we'll throw in a few other bits and bobs too. You'll find everything as it goes live compiled here.

Curious what we've made album of the year previously? Here are all of Drowned in Sound's albums of the year, compiled on one handy page.