Diiv

Over the last decade, DIIV have established themselves as one of rock music’s most fascinating bands, exploring new textures while pushing their songcraft forward in a way that continues to draw in larger audiences worldwide. They combine beauty and noise to the point of approaching a lush oblivion—a searing sound building on elements from dream-pop luminaries like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and Smashing Pumpkins. It’s becoming increasingly hard to establish a distinctive approach within popular music in general, and yet throughout their discography, DIIV’s sound and emotional tenor are unmistakably theirs.

Emerging from the fertile early-2010s Brooklyn DIY music scene, DIIV quickly proved themselves as one of the city’s most prominent live acts and have since widened their aesthetic with every successive release. Over the course of three albums, they have incorporated the driving gait of British guitar pop, the minimalist structures and Motorik rhythms of German psychedelia, metal’s lush fury, and the sonic immersion of shoegaze into their inviting world of sound.

Possessing a bracing and immersive live presence, DIIV are firmly situated within a deep legacy of boundary-pushing rock bands as they continue charting their own path. Their influence can be felt across a new generation of artists pursuing their own punishing bliss, and has left its mark on shoegaze and guitar-driven music as DIIV themselves continue to cement their legacy as one of North America’s most formidable rock acts.

Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse have spent years making thoughtful and unpredictable art, whether musically as Joan of Arc or Cap’n Jazz or Spa Moans, or under their given names as writers and visual artists. On Giddy Skelter, their debut album as the unadorned “Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse,” they’ve crafted a swirling, past-future, future-past, sorta-rock melange, that’s undeniably of its moment. It’s rich with musical references while radiating a visionary path forward.

Mixing live instrumentation with samples so manipulated that it’s impossible to tell their origins, it’s music that feels both eerily familiar yet inarguably the product of their exacting processes. Sometimes the thing that makes great rock n’ roll is the ineffable and the intangible, something you can only describe as alchemy; other times it’s the rigors of process. On Kinsella and Pulse’s Giddy Skelter, it’s both — and it sounds unlike anything else you’ll hear this year.

Their follow-up album will be released on Kill Rock Stars in 2025.

14+ (under 16s need to be accompanied by an adult)