Death Cab for Cutie has announced their 11th studio album, I Built You A Tower, alongside the release of its first single, “Riptides.”

I Built You A Tower is Death Cab for Cutie’s follow-up to 2022’s Asphalt Meadows, which was praised by many fans as a return to their classic sound. The band seems aimed at returning even further to their roots: the new album, which launches on June 5 via Anti Records, is the Grammy-nominated band’s first on an indie label in over two decades.

Death Cab for Cutie’s current lineup, which includes Benjamin Gibbard, Nick Harmer, Dave Depper, Zac Rae, and Jason McGerr, insists that I Built You A Tower “is not the dreaded ‘return to form’ narrative.” A press release for the album instead calls it “a reclamation of a core ethos that has run through Death Cab’s 30-year history.”

“The whole experience of this record got us back to the earliest versions of this band,” says Harmer. “If the musicians in the room like what we’re working on, that’s enough. We reconnected with the confidence that comes with that.”

That confidence and nostalgia can be heard in the album’s first single, “Riptides,” which is available now.

“‘Riptides‘ is about the challenge of dealing with personal struggles as the world around us experiences tragedy and loss on an unfathomable scale,” Gibbard says of the new single. “And how, when these two elements intertwine themselves in our psyches, it feels utterly paralyzing.”

Death Cab for Cutie has announced both a North American summer tour and a UK/EU fall tour. In the meantime, check out the video for “Riptides” below.