Seattle’s Deep Sea Diver will release Billboard Heart, their fourth album, and wide-screened Sub Pop debut worldwide on February 28. The new record includes the previously released title track, along with highlights ‘What Do I Know,’ ‘Emergency,’ ‘Let Me Go,’ her collaboration with Grammy-winner Madison Cunningham, and this week’s offering, the guttural new single, ‘Shovel.’
Billboard Heart immediately puts Deep Sea Diver in the company of St. Vincent, TV on the Radio, and Flock of Dimes, bands that have found newly ornate and magnetic ways to make indie rock by discarding notions of how it must sound or what it must say. Dobson punches through her past here. As she howls during Billboard Heart’s rapturous title track, she is “welcoming the future by letting go of it.”
It is a coup, a triumph over self-doubt in which what first felt like failure became an opportunity to find new freedom, belief, and strength. You can hear it in each of these eleven songs, the beating heart that makes everything here feel like a new anthem for finding your own way forward.
Billboard Heart was written and performed by primary songwriter and guitar player Jessica Dobson, and her partner, drummer and band co-writer Peter Mansen, and synth player Elliot Jackson. Additional contributions include former The Shins’ bandmate Yuuki Matthews, Caroline Rose, and Greg Leisz. Billboard Heart was produced by Jessica Dobson and Andy D. Park, with additional production from Adam Schatz, mixed by Park, and mastered by Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone.
You can now watch the single-take official video for ‘Shovel,’ directed by Tyler Kalberg and Deep Sea Diver. Dobson says of the track and visual, “‘Shovel’ is one of the most angular and dualistic songs I’ve written, and I wanted to do a one-shot video that captured the grit, rawness, and intensity of the song. Simply put, it is me digging and dancing with a shovel in the middle of the night, desperately looking for beauty in dark places. Influenced by Lynch, the Cohen brothers, Nick Cave, and the sweet dance moves of Kate Bush.”
Billboard Heart:
- Billboard Heart
- What Do I Know
- Emergency
- Shovel
- Tiny Threads
- Loose Change
- Always Waving Goodbye
- Let Me Go (feat. Madison Cunningham)
- Be Sweet
- See in the Dark
- Happiness Is Not a Given
