Death Cab for Cutie Announce New Album With 'Riptides' Video

Official Announcement | Published: Mar 16, 2026 2:00 PM EDT

(PPR) Death Cab for Cutie announce their 11th studio album. I Built You A Tower, will be released on June 5th via ANTI- Records. The move marks the band's return to their independent roots after 20 years on Atlantic Records.

Produced and engineered by John Congleton and assembled from a mere three weeks of sessions, I Built You A Tower was recorded at Animal Rites in Los Angeles, as well as the band members' homes in Seattle, Bellingham, Los Angeles and Portland.

Alongside today's album announcement, Death Cab for Cutie share the album's propulsive first single, "Riptides." Speaking on the single Gibbard says, "Riptides is about the challenge of dealing with personal struggles as the world around us experiences tragedy and loss on an unfathomable scale. And how when these two elements intertwine themselves in our psyches, it feels utterly paralyzing."

In recent years, Death Cab celebrated several historic milestones, including massive sold-out tours celebrating the 20th anniversaries of seminal releases Transatlanticism and Plans. Those tours were pivotal to the creation of I Built You A Tower, as behind the scenes, Gibbard weathered the greatest pressure of his professional life - fronting both Death Cab and the Postal Service on arena stages for hours a night - while struggling with the collapse of his personal life in the background. The strain felt too much for one person to bear, and the "tower" originated as a way to protect himself. "There's this need to find a place in ourselves to put loss and grief," he explains. "A place that can hold it so we can move on with our lives. But there are these moments where the trauma breaks out of that shell we created for it."

I Built You A Tower is an album of reconciling with past selves in order to locate a new future. "The anniversary tours exorcised any nostalgia in our systems," Depper observes. "We felt part of this powerful force greater than all of us and went into the studio with a sense of, how can we capture that feeling and put it into something new?" Harmer continues, "The whole experience of this record got us back to the earliest versions of this band: If the musicians in the room like what we're working on, that's enough. We reconnected with the confidence that comes with that." As such, this is not the dreaded "return to form" narrative, but a reclamation of a core ethos that has run through Death Cab's 30-year history.

The band recently announced a North American summer tour, which is on sale now. Today the band also announces an autumn UK/EU tour, with tickets going on sale this Friday at 10 am locally. These performances come on the heels of a historic, sold-out global tour in marking the 20th anniversary of Transatlanticism plus their universally acclaimed 10th studio effort, 2022's Asphalt Meadows. Sign up for early access to tickets at deathcabforcutie.com.

Tour dates:
May 29 - Denver, CO - Outside Days
July 10 - Minneapolis, MN - Armory *
July 11 - Milwaukee, WI - Miller High Life Theatre *
July 12 - Indianapolis, IN - Everwise Amphitheater at White River State Park *
July 14 - Cincinnati, OH - MegaCorp Pavilion *
July 15 - Cleveland, OH - Jacobs Pavilion *
July 17 - Philadelphia, PA - Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts ^
July 18 - Canandaigua, NY - CMAC ^
July 19 - Toronto, ON - RBC Amphitheatre ^
July 21 - Columbia, MD - Merriweather Post Pavilion ^
July 22 - Raleigh, NC - Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek ^
July 24 - St. Louis, MO - Stifel Theatre #
July 25 - Bentonville, AR - The Momentary #
July 26 - Council Bluffs, IA - Harrah's Stir Cove #
July 28 - Sandy, UT - Sandy Amphitheater #
July 29 - Sandy, UT - Sandy Amphitheater #
July 31 - Phoenix, AZ - Arizona Financial Theatre #
August 2 - Los Angeles, CA - The Greek Theatre #
August 3 - Los Angeles, CA - The Greek Theatre #
August 4 - San Diego, CA - Gallagher Square at Petco Park #
August 6 - Las Vegas, NV - The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas &
August 7 - Paso Robles, CA - Vina Robles Amphitheatre &
August 9 - San Francisco, CA - Outside Lands
September 16 - Dublin, Ireland - 3Olympia Theatre
September 19 - Manchester, UK - O2 Victoria Warehouse
September 20 - Edinburgh, UK - Corn Exchange
September 21 - Gateshead, UK - The Glasshouse
September 23 - Bristol, UK - The Prospect Building
September 25 - London, UK - Troxy
September 29 - Utrecht, Netherlands - TivoliVredenburg
September 30 - Brussels, Belgium - Cirque Royal
October 1 - Berlin, Germany - Columbiahalle
October 3 - Paris, France - Elysee Montmartre

*with Jay Som
^with Japanese Breakfast
#with Nation of Language
&with Lala Lala