DIIV have spent their career blurring the lines between shoegaze, grunge and pop, building a sound that feels both deeply rooted in the underground and instinctively melodic. From the shimmering haze of Oshin to the weight and darkness of Deceiver and Frog In Boiling Water, Zachary Cole Smith, Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield and Ben Newman have consistently resisted easy genre labels.
Now, with their fifth album ZIRP!, DIIV call this territory The New Alternative: a sound for the algorithmically optimized, VC-funded, AI-enhanced 2020s, where a million streams is great, a billion even better, and a trillion suddenly feels within reach. Produced by British pop innovator A. G. Cook, ZIRP! brings DIIV’s underground instincts and pop ambitions into direct collision, transforming themes of technological excess, societal breakdown and the endless streaming economy into some of their brightest and most immediate songs yet.
Cook’s approach was crucial to the record. Rather than simply remixing DIIV’s demos, he immersed himself in the band’s live sound, recording live drums early, building intricate guitar parts around pedals and keeping computer intervention to a minimum. The result is an album that sounds immediate and physical while pushing DIIV somewhere genuinely new.
ZIRP! is, ultimately, DIIV growing up—and glowing up—without leaving the underground behind.
