Peter Livingston Holsapple (born February 19, 1956) is an American musician who, along with Chris Stamey, formed the dB's, a jangle-pop band from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

and Hootie & the Blowfish, before joining the Continental Drifters, a rock band originating from Los Angeles.

They released an independent album in 1972,[12] recorded at Crescent City Sound Studios in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the spring of 1971.

Little Diesel's album, the 17-track No Lie (produced by Stamey in 1974) was released on twenty 8-track cartridges, and it was re-released in 2006 on Telstar Records.

[10] The band's music was heavily inspired by Lenny Kaye's 1972 compilation Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968.

[13] College broke Little Diesel up, but Holsapple continued to write and sing, eventually moving to New York City from Memphis ("thinking some of the Big Star magic might rub off on me"),[10] where he had recorded at Sam Phillips Studio with Big Star engineer Richard Rosebrough, three months into the dB's existence.

While working part-time at a record store called Musical Maze at 294 Third Avenue,[14] in October 1978[15] Holsapple joined as keyboard player and backing vocalist, but he quickly began submitting his songs, playing guitar, and singing lead vocals alongside Stamey.

[16] The dB's released four studio albums before their disbandment in 1988: Stand for Decibels (1981), Repercussion (1981), Like This (1984) and The Sound of Music (1987).

In 1981, while living in New York City, Holsapple would often hear the dBs' first single, "Black and White", on Meg Griffin's Saturday-morning show on WXRK.

He participated in the writing and development, as well as the recording, of their 1991 multi-platinum release Out of Time,[17] but subsequently left his sideman role with R.E.M.

[20] The group went on to record three well-received albums, an EP of Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson covers, and several tribute-album tracks, none of which translated into a lot of sales.

This album featured a cover of the British progressive rock band Family's 1972 single "My Friend the Sun.

[24] On June 12, 2021, Holsapple and Stamey released Our Back Pages on Omnivore,[25] an album of acoustic arrangements of songs by the dB's for Record Store Day.