Behind The Tracks: Peel - Santa Under The Streetlight (Single) (2025)

“Santa under the Streetlight” has been around for a long time. For years, we talked about making a Christmas song that actually felt like us. Not glossy or ironic — just honest.

We’ve always had a strong relationship with holidays. Growing up working class, birthdays and Christmas were the rare moments when something new entered our lives: a record, maybe a guitar if we were lucky, clothes that hadn’t been passed down. Those days are stuck. They still do.

Musically, the aim was a melancholic indie pop/alt-rock song in the lineage of ELO, Tom Petty and Cheap Trick, with one foot in the 60s and another in the 80s — but unmistakably PEEL. The song is built on a very 60s, very Christmassy chord structure, dressed in bells, big piano, Mellotron strings, and choir. Twelve-string guitars bring the jangle, the bass nods quietly to the Beatles, and the vocal harmonies carry warmth and restraint rather than excess.

On the surface, the lyrics circle those Christmases that live on in memory — the ones we try to relive or recreate as adults. They flirt with sentimentality but never surrender to it. What comes through instead is nostalgia, melancholy, and a quiet sense of longing.

In the end, “Santa under the Streetlight” sounds exactly like a PEEL Christmas song should: timeless, reflective, and emotionally grounded. Whatever it becomes for the listener — a memory, a feeling, a picture — that part belongs to them.