DIIV have unveiled Kid, the second track to be taken from their forthcoming fifth studio album ZIRP!, due for release on 30th October 2026 via Fantasy Recordings. The new single arrives alongside an accompanying music video directed by Jaxon Whittington and filmed by DIIV frontman Zachary Cole Smith’s son Roy and his friend Julian. Following the previously released The Fountain, Kid offers another glimpse into an album that sees the New York band push their familiar shoegaze haze towards something brighter, sharper and considerably more immediate.
DIIV
Across their career, DIIV have consistently occupied an unusual position between underground experimentation and accessible alternative rock. Their music has drawn heavily on shoegaze, grunge and psychedelic textures while maintaining a strong instinct for melody, and ZIRP! promises to bring those seemingly opposing impulses into even closer proximity.
The band — Cole Smith, Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield and Ben Newman — describe the album’s approach through the idea of “The New Alternative”, embracing a musical landscape in which traditional genre boundaries have become increasingly difficult to define.
Rather than choosing between the abrasive and the melodic, ZIRP! aims to bring the two together. The result is a record that retains the dense guitars and atmospheric textures associated with DIIV while placing greater emphasis on hooks, rhythm and songs that can connect immediately with a wider audience.
Kid sits at the centre of that transition, following The Fountain, whose expansive sound combines the band’s heavier instincts with a more propulsive guitar approach. Across the album, DIIV look increasingly willing to foreground their pop instincts without abandoning the darker sonic world that has defined much of their work.
The record’s title, ZIRP!, takes its name from “zero interest rate policies”, a reference to the economic conditions that helped fuel an era of speculative startups and an increasingly digitised culture. DIIV use the concept as a jumping-off point for an album that examines contemporary life through a mixture of irony, anxiety and exuberance.
The band’s previous album, 2024’s Frog In Boiling Water, confronted themes of societal stagnation and breakdown through a dense, often oppressive sonic palette. ZIRP! continues to look at the instability of the modern world, but approaches those ideas from a more playful and luminous perspective.
Subjects ranging from technology and corporate power to the relentless demands of streaming culture become material for songs that are considerably more sparkling and immediate than the subject matter might suggest. That shift is largely down to the band’s collaboration with producer A. G. Cook, whose work across contemporary pop has made him an ideal partner for a band looking to dismantle the boundaries between alternative music and the mainstream.
Cook’s involvement initially began with an idea of radically reconstructing DIIV’s existing demos, but that approach was ultimately abandoned. Instead, he immersed himself in the band’s live performances and began considering how the energy of their shows could inform the studio recordings. “I became a bit obsessed with their live sound, and insisted on recording live drums before most of the songs were even finished,” Cook explains.
The recording process consequently placed a strong emphasis on live instrumentation and physical performance. The band spent considerable time developing intricate guitar parts around specific effects pedals, while deliberately limiting the amount of work carried out inside a computer. That approach helped ZIRP! develop into something distinct from both the band’s earlier records and the initial concept Cook had envisaged. “After a few rounds of that, ZIRP! emerged as a concept, and a sort of utopian, dystopian mantra,” Cook says. “For me it became a vehicle to push the band into new territory.”
That push is reflected in the album’s ambition. DIIV aren’t abandoning the underground aesthetic that brought them to prominence; instead, they are attempting to expand its possibilities, treating melody and scale as tools rather than compromises. The band’s evolution can be traced through the records that preceded ZIRP!. 2019’s Deceiver embraced a heavier, grittier strain of alternative rock, while Frog In Boiling Water returned to the immersive qualities of shoegaze and explored increasingly unsettling textures.
The new album takes elements from both while introducing a newfound sense of momentum and brightness. Kid and The Fountain therefore provide two early entry points into a record that promises to be one of DIIV’s most ambitious releases yet. The full 11-track album moves through songs including When The Glow Came For Us, Dare Me, The Crash, Trillions, Us Against You, Evangelizer, Underground, My Star and Idiot In The Sky.
Alongside the album announcement, DIIV have also confirmed an expanding run of live performances. The band will appear at Balaclava Fest in São Paulo on 27th September before heading into a North American run that includes a series of dates supporting Interpol, as well as a Los Angeles show with Basement.
They will then return to Europe in November, with appearances at Pitchfork Music Festival in Paris and Sonic City Festival in Kortrijk before heading to London for Pitchfork Music Festival on 7th November.
For a band whose identity has always been closely tied to the experience of hearing their layered guitars and expansive arrangements in a live environment, the new shows should provide an opportunity to see how the material from ZIRP! translates away from the studio. With Kid now providing the latest piece of the puzzle, DIIV are steadily revealing an album that appears intent on turning their long-running tension between noise and melody into something more unified.
ZIRP! arrives on 30th October 2026 via Fantasy Recordings, marking the next stage in DIIV’s continuing evolution from shoegaze outsiders into a band increasingly comfortable occupying the space between experimentation, alternative rock and pop ambition.
Upcoming UK Live Date:
NOVEMBER
7th – London, Pitchfork Music Festival
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