Death Cab Cutie kicked off 2026 with the big news that their 20-plus years releasing music through Atlantic was over, and that they’d now inked a deal with ANTI- Records (which is just “Atlantic” minus the “anti,” oddly enough). Ben Gibbard shared in a press release that he was “thrilled” to be listed alongside his “favorite artists” and “old friends” on the label, and that he couldn’t “wait to begin this new chapter with the wonderful staff at ANTI- and share with [us] what [they’ve] been working on.”
It didn’t necessarily seem like that new chapter was imminent, yet here we are: Death Cab have announced that their eleventh album, I Built You a Tower, will land June 5 via their new label home. “Riptides” serves as the first single, an upbeat, slightly unsettling slow build of a song that eventually hits the sort of crashing climax suggested by its title. It’s fairly enigmatic, and it’s also very much Death Cab. “‘Riptides’ is about the challenge of dealing with personal struggles as the world around us experiences tragedy and loss on an unfathomable scale,” Gibbard shared, reiterating the stuff that basically all songs are about these days, inevitably. “And how when these two elements intertwine themselves in our psyches, it feels utterly paralyzing.”
Check out the video for “Riptides” below, and pre-order I Built You a Tower here.
