DIIV share new single ‘Kid’ + announce new album ‘ZIRP!’

DIIV are back with the second taste of their upcoming album ‘ZIRP!’, out October 30th via Fantasy Recordings. The new single Kid cracks open a whole new side of the record, and it arrives with a music video directed by Jaxon Whittington and filmed by vocalist Zachary Cole Smith’s son Roy and his friend Julian — a genuinely DIY, family-affair touch for a band that’s never been afraid to blur the lines between scrappy and shimmering.

Kid follows lead single The Fountain, and both tracks point toward a band leaning fully into what they’re calling “The New Alternative” — a genre built for the algorithm-soaked, VC-funded, streaming-obsessed 2020s. Where a million streams is nice, a billion is better, and a trillion isn’t out of the question.

What the Press Is Saying

“Cook renders DIIV’s shoegaze textures as if in arcade mode: portentous riffs wriggle like pop-punk earworms; feedback harbours micro melodies like radio jingles.” – The Guardian

“mesmerising – instantly recognisable as DIIV, it nonetheless pulls their sound into arenas of elasticity.” – CLASH

“what might have been previously called ‘Glow Up’ is quickly becoming a full-on ‘Slay Era’.” – So Young

“DIIV surprised us with this one.” – Stereogum

“balances DIIV’s familiar haze with an anthemic immediacy” – SPIN

About ‘ZIRP!’

On their fifth album, DIIV — Zachary Cole Smith, Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield and Ben Newman — smash together the underground grit and pop instinct that have defined them since day one. It’s the sound of a band answering the questions most acts spend a career avoiding: what does it mean to grow up? And, just as importantly, to glow up?

DIIV have always braided the harsh edges of shoegaze (2024’s ‘Frog In Boiling Water’) and grunge (2019’s ‘Deceiver’) with genuinely catchy pop melody, long before the rest of the world had the vocabulary for it. Now, with artists like Slayyyter, Eartheater and Turnstile blowing up old genre gatekeeping, DIIV are stepping into a universe that finally makes sense for them — and ‘ZIRP!’ is where they plant the flag.

The album is produced by A. G. Cook (Caroline Polachek, Charli XCX), and named for the zero interest rate policies that fueled a decade of failed startups and turned everyone into an “atomised user.” It’s a fittingly sharp, sparkly concept for a record that takes on Palantir, societal collapse, and the endless streaming hamster wheel — and turns them into pop songs you can’t stop humming. Opener and lead single The Fountain pairs classic DIIV sprawl with a rhythmic guitar hook built for arenas, and the rest of the record follows suit: hookier, punchier, and more confident than anything they’ve done before.

On working with the band, A. G. Cook shared:

“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, Cook became something of a DIIV scholar — hitting their live shows and building a theory of where the band 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. 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.”

‘ZIRP!’ track list

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

Upcoming Live Dates

* = with Interpol    ^ = with Basement

9/27 – Sao Paulo, Brazil @ Balaclava Fest
9/29 – Brooklyn, NY @ The Meadows
9/30 – Buffalo, NY @ Town Ballroom
10/2 – Toronto, CA @ Sobeys Stadium*
10/3 – Montreal, CA @ L’Olympia*
10/6 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE*
10/7 – Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theatre and Ballroom*
10/9 – Detroit, MI @ Masonic Jack White Theatre*
10/10 – Columbus, OH @ Kemba Live!*
10/11 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed*
10/13 – Chesterfield, MO @ The Factory*
10/15 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern*
10/16 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern*
10/17 – Nashville, TN @ The Pinnacle*
10/20 – Los Angeles, CA @ Shrine Expo Hall^
10/21 – San Francisco, CA @ Psyched! Fest
11/2 – Paris, FR @ Pitchfork Music Festival
11/6 – Kortrijk, BE @ Sonic City Festival
11/7 – London, UK @ Pitchfork Music Festival

Listen / Watch / Pre-order

Listen to Kid: https://ffm.to/diiv-kid
Pre-order/save ‘ZIRP!’: https://ffm.to/diiv-zirp

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