The Diiv ZIRP Kid video arrives with a twist: it was filmed not by a seasoned professional, but by Zachary Cole Smith’s son Roy and Roy’s friend Julian, a pair of young collaborators enlisted by director Jaxon Whittington for the band’s latest visual.
The song is called ‘Kid’, and the video’s charm is pretty on the nose. Whittington handed the cameras to the children, and the result is exactly what you’d hope for: loose, warm, and shot with the kind of guileless energy that no adult cinematographer could fake.
ZIRP and the road ahead for Diiv
The track is lifted from ZIRP!, the forthcoming Diiv album produced by A. G. Cook and due 30 October via Fantasy Records. The title is an acronym for ‘zero interest rate policies’, which gives you some sense of the band’s headspace going into this record. Cook’s involvement marks a notable production shift for the group, and the appetite around the release is already building.
According to Pitchfork, the record’s lead single is ‘The Fountain’, and ZIRP! serves as the follow-up to Frog in Boiling Water, which the band released in 2024. Two albums in quick succession, the second one produced by one of the more restlessly inventive figures in contemporary pop production, it’s a decent statement of intent.
The Diiv ZIRP Kid video drops as the band are preparing to head out on a run of tour dates across North America and Europe, kicking off later this month. The European leg includes a date at Pitchfork Paris in November, which will put the new material in front of a crowd that has been tracking the band closely for years.
From São Paulo to Paris: Diiv’s touring run
Before the main run gets going, Diiv play a one-off Brazilian show at São Paulo’s Balaclava Fest. That gig stands alone on the calendar, a warm-up of sorts before the full tour cycle swings into motion. Getting a few thousand people in São Paulo before hitting Paris and North America is a decent way to road-test a new record.
The ZIRP Kid video itself sits well within the band’s aesthetic, even as the production involves an approach you wouldn’t normally find on a music press brief. Whittington’s decision to give Roy and Julian creative control is either a savvy piece of direction or a complete leap of faith. Probably both. The footage carries that slightly unsteady, sun-bleached quality that you can’t really manufacture.
Diiv have always operated at the intersection of shoegaze atmosphere and post-punk discipline, and the choice of A. G. Cook as producer raises the obvious question of how far ZIRP! pushes that template. Cook’s fingerprints tend to leave things brighter and more maximalist than where they started. Whether that tension produces something genuinely strange or simply unusual is the thing fans will be arguing about on 30 October.
For now, the Diiv ZIRP Kid video is out, Roy and Julian’s directing debut is complete, and the countdown to the album is properly underway. ‘The Fountain’ is also out now as the record’s lead single, giving listeners two early reference points ahead of the full release.
