DIIV go full pop star on ‘Trillions,’ and we’re here for it

DIIV just dropped a new single and video called Trillions, and it might be the loudest, shiniest, most gloriously pop thing they’ve ever put their name on. It’s the next taste of their fifth album, ‘ZIRP!’, landing October 30th via Fantasy Recordings.

Big House, Wads of Cash, Business Suit

The Trillions video, directed by Jaxon Whittington, goes full bombast: a big house, stacks of cash, flashy fast cars, and the band always dressed to impress in business suits. Is it fantasy? Is it delusion? Earnest or satire? It’s complicated, and that’s half the fun. What’s not complicated is that this is the most pop song DIIV has ever made, co-written with A. G. Cook.

Trillions follows the earlier singles Kid and lead single The Fountain. The Kid video also came from Whittington, and it was shot by vocalist Zachary Cole Smith’s son Roy and his friend Julian. Earlier this week, the band played a packed room in New York City and aired songs from ‘ZIRP!’ live for the very first time.

Welcome to The New Alternative

DIIV are calling it The New Alternative: a new genre for the 21st century, built for music’s optimized, VC-funded, super deluxe, remixed, AI-enhanced, algorithmically perfected wild west 2020s, where a million streams is great, a billion is better, and a trillion is well within reach.

On ‘ZIRP!’, Zachary Cole Smith, Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield and Ben Newman smash together the underground pedigree and pop instinct that have anchored the band like magnetic poles for most of their career. The result is a sound that makes the idea of DIIV playing “between worlds” feel obsolete. Put simply, they answer the question so many bands can’t: what would it mean to grow up? And glow up, too?

The world has been slow to find the words for what DIIV do, which is braid the harshness of shoegaze (on 2024’s ‘Frog In Boiling Water’) and grunge (2019’s ‘Deceiver’) with mellifluous, memorable pop melody. Lately the world has caught up, with artists like Slayyyter, Eartheater and Turnstile pushing old-guard gatekeepers to find new ways to describe this gleeful disregard for scene designations and genre tags. With ‘ZIRP!’, DIIV lock in on a name for the universe they’ve been chasing all along, and a sound that is the apotheosis of it.

A. G. Cook Behind the Board

Producing is British pop wizard A. G. Cook (Caroline Polachek, Charli XCX), a chief architect of our current post-category future. The album is named for the zero interest rate policies that drew us into a world of failed startups and turned us all into atomised “users.” It expands on the themes of ‘Frog In Boiling Water’ with a newfound lightness. Palantir, societal breakdown and streaming’s endless hamster wheel all become fodder for rich, sparkling pop songs.

Album opener The Fountain pairs the sprawl and squall of DIIV records past with a jolting rhythmic guitar section that has arena-filling potential. Across the record, the band zeroes in on its punchiest, most memorable melodies to date, with hooks and tossed-off earworms from a band ready to make good on its ability to play in the mainstream.

When DIIV first approached Cook, the producer says, “it was in the spirit of destroying & rebuilding their demos, Screamadelica-style, into a finished product, but that hybrid, half-remix approach felt completely wrong to me.” Instead, he became a professor of DIIV studies, attending the band’s shows and forming a unified theory of where they needed to go next.

“I became a bit obsessed with their live sound, and insisted on recording live drums before most of the songs were even finished. We spent a lot of time recording intricate guitar parts with specific guitar pedals, and as little time as possible doing anything on a computer, at least by my standards,” he says. “After a few rounds of that, ZIRP! emerged as a concept, and a sort of utopian, dystopian mantra. For me it became a vehicle to push the band into new territory.”

What the Press Is Saying

• “fragile shoegaze that – despite producer AG Cook’s toybox of synths – invites a cosy, satisfying kind of wallowing.” – The Guardian
• “DIIV surprised us with this one.” – Stereogum
• “balances DIIV’s familiar haze with an anthemic immediacy” – SPIN

‘ZIRP!’ Tracklist

1. The Fountain
2. Kid
3. When The Glow Came For Us
4. Dare Me
5. The Crash
6. Trillions
7. Us Against You
8. Evangelizer
9. Underground
10. My Star
11. Idiot In The Sky

DIIV, out October 30th, 2026 via Fantasy Recordings. Pre-order here.

Catch DIIV Live

DIIV are supporting Interpol on select North American dates this October, and they’ll play with Basement on October 20th at Shrine Expo Hall in Los Angeles.

* with Interpol
^ with Basement

• 02/10 – Toronto, CA @ Sobeys Stadium*
• 03/10 – Montreal, CA @ L’Olympia*
• 06/10 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE*
• 07/10 – Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theatre and Ballroom*
• 09/10 – Detroit, MI @ Masonic Jack White Theatre*
• 10/10 – Columbus, OH @ Kemba Live!*
• 11/10 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed*
• 13/10 – Chesterfield, MO @ The Factory*
• 15/10 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern*
• 16/10 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern*
• 17/10 – Nashville, TN @ The Pinnacle*
• 20/10 – Los Angeles, CA @ Shrine Expo Hall^
• 21/10 – San Francisco, CA – Psyched! Fest
• 02/11 – Paris, FR – Pitchfork Music Festival
• 06/11 – Kortrijk, BE – Sonic City Festival
• 07/11 – London, UK – Pitchfork Music Festival

Give Trillions a spin, pre-order or save ‘ZIRP!’, and keep your eyes peeled, because there’s more DIIV on the way.