are sleigh-bells the new maracas?

There's the dramatic sleigh-bell break in The Bad Plus's "This Guy's In Love With You." The Pascal Schumacher Quartet's "Monday Night At The Cat Club is gently propelled by them.

Other members of the bell family are seeing action as well: John Hollenbeck regularly makes things go all twinkly on The Claudia Quintet's For and Nels Cline uses bells (or maybe a glockenspiel) to create a luminous finale to Draw Breath.

This all surely adds up to something more than a random blog post. But to what?