DIIV Finally Have a Name for What They’ve Always Been Doing — “The Fountain” Makes the Case

DIIV announced ZIRP! via a hotline number mailed to fans last week, which is exactly the kind of move a band makes when they know they have something. The album is due October 30 on Fantasy Recordings and was produced by A.G. Cook, the British pop architect behind Caroline Polachek and Charli XCX. The pairing makes more sense than it might seem: Cook attended DIIV’s live shows, formed a unified theory of where the band needed to go, and then largely kept computers out of the process. Live drums were tracked before most songs were finished. Guitar parts were recorded with specific pedals, methodically. The result is DIIV’s punchiest and most immediate record.

The title is named for zero interest rate policies, the economic conditions that spawned a decade of failed startups and turned everyone into atomized users. Against that backdrop, Zachary Cole Smith, Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield, and Ben Newman make pop songs about Palantir, societal breakdown, and the streaming hamster wheel — and the songs are genuinely catchy. “The Fountain” opens the album with the sprawl and squall of previous DIIV records braided with a jolting rhythmic guitar section that reads as arena-scale. The band calls this The New Alternative, which is as good a name as any for what they’ve been chasing for fifteen years.

DIIV support Interpol on select North American dates in October before a run of European festival appearances in November. Pre-order the album below.

Pre-order ZIRP! ↗

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”