A breathtaking highlight off her forthcoming debut album ‘Burnout/Boys,’ Ski Team’s “Santa” is a quietly devastating meditation on restraint, desire, and the strange mercy of being held back – a tender, unsettling portrait of early adulthood, power, and emotional responsibility.

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Stream: “Santa” – Ski Team

“I get to talk to Santa himself.”

Ski Team opens her latest single with a wink at first – playful, disarming, almost sweet – before revealing the deeper tension humming underneath. Raw and raucous, tender and quietly devastating, “Santa” is achy without being indulgent, polished without sanding down its edges. It feels like the full bloom of a singular artistry coming clearly into focus – dramatic, dynamic, and hauntingly intimate, a diaristic reckoning and reverie that holds confession and catharsis in the same breath. This is a song that blooms slowly and painfully, letting restraint do the heavy lifting.

I get to talk
to Santa himself
He wears a snakeskin belt
He gives me a bump
while I wait for the show
He’s the coolest guy I know

Most songs with “Santa” in their name have a ho-ho-ho and some wintry jingles. This isn’t one of those songs. Released December 3^rd, “Santa” was the last song tracked during the making of Ski Team’s forthcoming debut album Burnout/Boys, recorded just days before last year’s Christmas. That sense of timing – end-of-year, end-of-chapter – lingers in the music’s bones. Produced by Philip Weinrobe, the track feels close and human, its sparseness amplifying every inflection in Lucie Lozinski’s voice. There’s levity in her delivery, even warmth, but the emotional undercurrent is unmistakably uneasy, built around longing that refuses resolution.

But sometimes I ache
when he comes around
in the summers he works in town,
but we moved from letters
when I was like ten
Now he calls me in my apartment
To keep me out of trouble

Ski Team is the project of Lucie Lozinski, a lifelong musician and award-winning writer who has spent years learning how to sit with nuance rather than resolve – letting tension, ambiguity, and restraint do the work. Active for the past five years and based in New York, Lozinski has quietly built Ski Team into a space where songwriting, storytelling, and observation intersect. She grew up surrounded by music – writing songs and learning to harmonize almost as soon as she could speak – and sang with major artists before she was ten, later performing in bands as a teenager before turning her focus toward writing. After studying creative writing, literature, translation, and linguistics, and working professionally as a technical writer, Lozinski returned fully to music with a sharpened sense of language and intention. That dual fluency – in sound and sentence – defines Ski Team’s work, where humor and ache coexist and where meaning is often found in what’s held back rather than spelled out.

In her own words, “Santa” is about “having a crush on someone you shouldn’t, like an authority figure. Where it’s not the right time or right dynamic, but the idea is persistent. And the beauty and ache when the other person doesn’t allow it. Blows, but also… thank you… Some sadness and beauty.” That tension – desire meeting a firm, unmoving boundary – is what gives the song its quiet power. Her lyrics don’t dramatize transgression; rather, she meditates on denial, on the strange mix of gratitude and heartbreak that comes with being protected from yourself.

I tell him I met a boy my own age
I tell him the things we say
I feel him tense up and I feel my heart race
He slips up and calls me babe

Penned as a conversation with that “special” someone, “Santa” feels strangely conversational, almost casual, which only makes Ski Team’s implications sharper.

The narrator confides, reminisces, flirts, pulls back. Then comes the line that reframes everything: “But you have me marked as nice / to keep me out of trouble.” Musically, it lands in near silence. Emotionally, it cuts deep. Lozinski explains that moment as one of sudden clarity: “Musically, I think it hits hard because the instruments cut out – you get a moment of clarity, alone, nothing, followed by a sharp inhale, then all the instruments and ideas come in harder than ever.”

That pause mirrors the experience of rejection itself. “Before the emotions, there’s a brief moment of nothing,” she says. And that nothingness is where “Santa” lives – not in escalation, but in containment. The line drawn is firm, and whether it’s painful or protective is left unresolved. “Is it a damning rejection, or is it a responsible and kind decision – to preserve a platonic relationship? Is Santa looking out for the narrator? I don’t know that I have answers,” Lozinski admits.

I want you to sneak into my room in July
If it takes a thousand tries
I want to ruin your suit
I want to cross all your lines
But you have me marked as nice

To keep
Me out
[Of trouble, out of trouble]
Keep
Me out
[Of trouble, out of trouble]

That ambiguity is the song’s great strength. “Santa” never crosses the line it longs for. Instead, it circles it, returns to it, sits with it. The repeated refrain of “keep me out of trouble” becomes both a plea and a resignation, a mantra for learning how to live with disappointment without letting it curdle into bitterness.

A singular artist with a unique voice and perspective, Lozinski brings a rare precision to her work.

“All I want to do before I die is make nice music, and I think I’m starting to do that with this record,” she says of Burnout/Boys. Recorded mostly live in a room together, the album captures “the rawness of live performance and in-room chemistry” alongside what she describes as “a good mix of drama and comedy in the lyrics.”

“Santa” fits squarely into that vision. While Burnout/Boys is, in Lozinski’s words, an album of “burnout and boys,” this song leans into the latter – offering something gentler than closure. “In the overall narrative of navigating early adulthood in the city, I hope ‘Santa’ offers some peace about the things that don’t go your way,” she explains. “A rejection keeps you from more trouble… It may be ‘the right thing,’ but it is nonetheless hard to stomach.”

That hard truth is what makes “Santa” linger. It doesn’t ask you to cheer or cry; it asks you to listen. To sit in the quiet aftermath of wanting something you can’t – or shouldn’t – have. To recognize the strange mercy in being held back. In a season full of noise and excess, Ski Team’s “Santa” feels like a gift wrapped in restraint: Intimate, aching, and quietly unforgettable.

And in a moment when so much songwriting feels compelled to explain itself – to confess loudly, to flatten nuance into spectacle – Ski Team’s restraint feels almost radical. “Santa” trusts silence. It trusts implication. It trusts the listener to sit with discomfort without demanding resolution. That patience, that willingness to let a song live in uncertainty, places Lozinski in quiet opposition to a culture that often rewards emotional oversharing over emotional understanding. Her work doesn’t rush to be consumed; it asks to be considered.

Ski Team’s thoughtfulness – the care with which she approaches desire, power, and emotional responsibility – extends far beyond a single song. As Lozinski prepares to release her debut album Burnout/Boys, she’s carving out space for music that values patience over performance and feeling over flash. In conversation with Atwood Magazine, she opens up about the making of “Santa,” the philosophies guiding her songwriting, and what it means to create work that honors complexity rather than rushing past it.

Read our interview below, and stay tuned for more to come from this definitive 2026 artist to watch as she prepares to release her first full-length: Burnout/Boys is due out January 23!

To keep
Me out
[Of trouble, out of trouble]
Keep
Me out
[Of trouble, out of trouble]

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:: stream/purchase Burnout/Boys here ::

:: connect with Ski Team here ::

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Stream: “Santa” – Ski Team

A CONVERSATION WITH SKI TEAM

Ski Team: For those just discovering, I would say hello and thank you for being here. I’d like them to know my upcoming album was recorded mostly live in a room together (this has been surprising people). All I want to do before I die is make nice music, and I think I’m starting to do that with this record. It’s also my first one.

Another thing that confuses people is my name, so: Ski Team is me (Lucie Lozinski) + and a rotating team of people I’m grateful to work with.

Ski Team: I am so excited about it. We were able to capture several things I’m proud of: 1) the rawness of live performance and in-room chemistry, 2) some really pleasant novel sounds (it’s bassy, spacey, crunchy, smooth, wet, dry – has so much going on sonically), 3) a good mix of drama and comedy in the lyrics, and 4) precision in the vocal harmonies. I love what we made, which doesn’t always happen. It’s earnest without being like…cheese…and interesting without being avant garde.

I vaguely recall, before we began recording, that I was worried about refining the record’s themes and message. I talked to a mentor about it, and he told me to forget the thought – “they all came from you; that’s the through-line.” So I dropped the worry that day, and he was right. The record is sort of…me in my late twenties, trying to get everything sorted, having both work and love fall apart and restart and shift, realizing there is no real Arrival moment, and getting good at starting over. It feels like an honest gathering of friends at dinner rather than some heavy-handed themed party. Or like individual rocks I found interesting and picked up over the years until my pocket was heavy enough to show them.

Musically, I’m so happy about it. I got to work with artists who’ve made some of my favorite music. It’s not just like…cute songs on guitar. We built a whole world. As a listener, you’ll move from glistening hopeful spaces to deep, pulsing night driving to volcanic eruption to dusty trot to dark, dripping solitude. There are so many sounds on here that I can’t wait for people to hear.

People keep asking if I’m sick of the music, having spent all of this time on it. I am not sick of it at all. I think we made something lasting.

Ski Team: Yeeeee um – I don’t know. I didn’t set out to write it. It just happened.

Ski Team: I don’t know how personal I should get. Most of my songs are about a few things, so even I don’t know what it’s about until I see all the words come together.

“Santa” came about after #metoo, while dating someone a bit older, not being able to drop a longstanding crush, having several older male mentors and friends – it’s probably connecting a few ideas I’d had at the time. For instance, I remember talking to men at work after #metoo really took off. A common takeaway was to avoid working anywhere near young women to de-risk themselves, and I felt quite disappointed by that and spent time gently encouraging men to not shy away from young women but just like…you know, treat them like old men or whatever you have to tell yourself to treat them like normal humans.

Maybe one way to talk about “Santa” is by talking about Ernest Hemingway. He wrote a novel toward the end of his life called Across the River and into the Trees, where the 50-year-old male protagonist falls for an 18-year-old girl named Renata. The book is not beautiful. But it could’ve been. There’s an aching desire between the old man and the young lady. They like each other and spend time together, but he also calls Renata “Daughter,” and as a reader you’re not really sure whether it’s gonna be a star-crossed beautiful love that never happens or…whether their dynamic will shift to something more parent-child as the old man’s health deteriorates and she cares for him. Ultimately, they hook up on a gondola (!), and the love feels irresponsible and cheap all of a sudden – up until then, it was a deep and beautiful two souls mingling and seeing each other. By letting the old man go for it, Hemingway ruins the book.

Santa – the idea of him – is cool and timeless because he doesn’t sometimes sleep with the kids when they get older. He’s purely in this game for something sweet and wholesome. If you try something, he’ll tell you to buzz off and remind you about Mrs. Claus. But he remains your friend, and you can rely on him.

I worry I’m sounding pretty puritanical. I wish there were more Santas in the world.

Ski Team: Ah, thank you! Musically, I think it hits hard because the instruments cut out – you get a moment of clarity, alone, nothing, followed by a sharp inhale, then all the instruments and ideas come in harder than ever. Emotionally, that matches the narrator’s experience: the line is firmly drawn by Santa – it will not be crossed – and the narrator takes a beat before allowing the cascade of feelings.

That’s usually how rejections feel to me. Before the emotions, there’s a brief moment of nothing.

I think it’s hard for people when they want to stretch out, be bold, take a relationship in a different direction, dance freely…and…then…they get snubbed, put into a box, marked or categorized with an, “I don’t see you that way.” But in the narrator’s case with Santa, is it a damning rejection, or is it a responsible and kind decision – to preserve a platonic relationship? Is Santa looking out for the narrator? I don’t know that I have answers.

I didn’t listen to the new T. Swift but saw some of the commentary, got the sense she (like so many pop stars who eventually grow up) wants to be bad gal now, and like…the world kind of refuses to see her that way. In a way it’s kind of damning. We want to celebrate maturity, evolution, and expressive sexual liberations for people – but not for everyone. Some people are sweet, and we don’t want to see them in any other light.

Anyway back to the moment in question: I think it hits hard because…it’s a rejection, but it’s one that’s meant to protect the narrator. It may be “the right thing,” but it is nonetheless hard to stomach.

Ski Team: I titled Burnout/Boys in a pretty straightforward way, almost like using a label maker with all the drawers in your kitchen. This album contains songs of burnout and songs of boys.

“Santa” is more about boys.

In the overall narrative of navigating early adulthood in the city, I hope “Santa” offers some peace about the things that don’t go your way. A rejection keeps you from more trouble. By nature, it’s them like…letting you down (whether that’s in romance or work or some other opportunity). So… you do not want that! It’s not for you.

Ski Team: My hope for listeners is that they’ll give it a shot: listen to it in different environments – in the car, headphones, your apartment while you decorate the tree and invite people over and light candles this winter. There’s a lot of music in the world, and I hope that somehow this one cuts through the sea of noise.

I also would love to hear it out in the world this season – like, if you own a store in New York City or LA or SF or Pennsylvania or New Jersey or Maine (the places I’ll be) and are reading this, please (I beg) play it in your store. It is a dream to hear it come on while shopping for Christmas gifts or ordering an egg.

What I’ve taken away: I did so much processing on this record haha. Crushes and heartaches are honored and remembered in these songs, but I don’t feel them anymore. I definitely felt (still feel) some nerves about how certain words will be perceived. I don’t think about perception during songwriting. And my band and Phil (who produced Santa) were so supportive that I didn’t feel any shame playing my songs with them. But playing them out in the world, I realize I’m quite vulnerable when I sing some of these stories. But I’ve learned to view vulnerability as a strength and am fairly comfortable there.

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:: stream/purchase Burnout/Boys here ::

:: connect with Ski Team here ::

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Stream: “Santa” – Ski Team

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