Death Cab For Cutie Announce Upcoming File-Swap Album & New Music Release Date

Almost four years on from the release of their last studio album Thank You For Today’, Washington indie-rock outfit Death Cab For Cutie have revealed that their next - as yet untitled - full-length album is officially finished, and new music will be landing on May 11.

Taking to Instagram, the band posted the first image of the team together in the studio since the pandemic swept through America, stating, “New album done.” They added that the first taste of new music from the full-length project will arrive next week.

Speaking to SPIN late last year, lead singer Ben Gibbard noted that the record is by no means “a pandemic special”, but would explore the unavoidable themes of life and mortality amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as “the loss of time and the finite amount of it that we all have”.

Gibbard has also been quick to point out that the band are acutely aware that the last thing people are going to want to hear about in late 2022 is more strictly pandemic-focused content.

Unlike previous records, which have often seen demos written by Gibbard and fleshed out together in the studio, Death Cab’s forthcoming record was written almost entirely from remote locations along the east coast of America; with members living in LA, Portland, Seattle and the Death Cab’s hometown of Bellingham, the band developed a new, file-swap system to piece together the album and force themselves further from their comfort zones.

“I threw this idea at the band: I’ll say I invented it; it was my idea. [Laughs.] [It was] this weekly songwriting exercise where someone, on Monday, would be tasked with making a beat or a piece of music or a guitar riff, and he would send it to the next person on a Tuesday, and that person would have the entire day to work on it — and so on and so forth until Friday, when the person who was finishing the song had to mix it and have it done.” Gibbard told SPIN during a feature interview in November last year.

“We were doing this at our home studios, and everyone had complete editorial oversight. If the song got to me on a Thursday, and it was kind of an upbeat song but I want to make it sound like Massive Attack, I’d make it sound like Massive Attack. Someone might be like, ‘What the fuck? You changed my shit!’ And I’d be like, ‘Those are the rules! You can do whatever you want.’”

Bass player Nick Harmer hinted that Death Cab entered the studio with roughly 100 demos of potential album candidates from the file-swap sessions, that have been slowly whittled down over the months of recording.

No set in stone date has been announced for the album, but the band have previously hinted at a late 2022/early 2023 release.