This dramatizes the scene that inspired the song — in his fit voyeurism, Clarke watches a young woman recline in the lush expanse of her yard and is overwhelmed with emotion. As he explained to Pitchfork:

[My mom] lives in such a beautiful town– she moved there a few years after I moved out– but I got really depressed in this bourgeois, all-white seaside community. So one day I skipped class drove around and I just saw this girl in the nicest house, and she was just laying there, and I was totally overcome with immense depression. It looked so nice, and I was in that “what the fuck am I doing with my life?” mood at the time. I had a notepad with me, and the first half of that song was jotted down right then.

Vocalist George Clarke is most likely alluding to the children’s game of holding one’s breath while passing a graveyard, lest the tormented spirits within begin to haunt the passerby. To Clarke, the thought of American bourgeois lifestyle sickens him to a superstitious degree.

The metaphor also implies that the inhabitants of the houses are essentially dead: their comfort is their coffin.

In his words:

“That song just came to me when I was driving around. I grew up in an apartment my whole life. It was just me, my mom, and my brother– she supported us. And we’ve always liked driving through rich neighborhoods, especially around Christmas. We would always admire the wealth. I always had this strange feeling with it.”