DIIV's 'ZIRP!' Was Produced by A. G. Cook. Here's What the Credits Say So Far

By Dani Reyes,

ZIRP! album cover: an American flag drawn with a pink star field and orange stock-chart arrows for stripes, all crashing downward on white.

Who produced ZIRP!? The quick answer

A. G. Cook produced ZIRP!, the fifth DIIV album, out Friday, October 30. The credit comes from the band's label, Concord, and from Pitchfork's announcement story. The full track-by-track credits aren't public yet. They come out with the album on October 30.

Until then, here's exactly what's on the record, and what isn't.

What's confirmed right now

That's the whole list. The announcement material names no mixing engineer, no mastering engineer and no co-producer, so I'm not naming any either. The Bandcamp pre-order page carries the tracklist and "© 2026 DIIV," and nothing more on credits for now.

Concord's copy places Cook as the "British pop wizard A. G. Cook (Caroline Polachek, Charli XCX)." We've written about how Charli XCX spent years building hyperpop with Cook and SOPHIE, which is why his name on a DIIV record turned heads.

How Cook says he made it

Cook explained his approach in a press statement that Pitchfork printed. "I became a bit obsessed with their live sound, and insisted on recording live drums before most of the songs were even finished," he said. "We spent a lot of time recording intricate guitar parts with specific guitar pedals, and as little time as possible doing anything on a computer, at least by my standards."

He kept going: "After a few rounds of that, ZIRP! emerged as a concept, and a sort of utopian, dystopian mantra. For me it became a vehicle to push the band into new territory."

That's the credits-nerd headline here. A producer known for computer-built pop says he kept the laptop work to a minimum and tracked drums first.

Concord's announcement adds the backstory. When DIIV first approached him, Cook says, "it was in the spirit of destroying & rebuilding their demos, Screamadelica-style, into a finished product, but that hybrid, half-remix approach felt completely wrong to me." The label says he went to see the band play instead, "attending the band's shows and forming a unified theory of where the band needed to go next."

What Smith says about working with Cook

Smith told RUSSH the band didn't pick Cook for his pop résumé. "It was more like he was somebody we'd always wanted to work with, and it was his own music and his side projects, less so his production stuff," he said. He pointed to two of Cook's own rock-leaning records: "He made this record with Finn Keane called Thy Slaughter that was a really bizarre rock record. And then he made a record called Britpop two years ago that had this really futuristic, modern-sounding rock sensibility."

In the studio, Smith said, Cook ran things hands-on. "So he would just hand us a guitar and be like, 'All right, we need a part in this section.'" He also said Cook "pushed us to maintain a simplicity in the songwriting process because we love to just throw ideas at the computer and then deal with them later."

And on how fast Cook worked: "his ability to make decisions, sometimes tough decisions, so fast and with reasoning and logic behind it was really impressive to us."

The three singles out now

"The Fountain" came first, with the album announcement in August. It's the lead single and opens the album, and the label says it "pairs the sprawl and squall of DIIV records past with a jolting rhythmic guitar section."

DIIV: The Fountain (Official Visualizer)

"Kid" followed in September as the second single. Consequence reports its video was directed by Jaxon Whittington.

"Trillions" is the latest. The band's UK press release calls it "clearly the most pop song DIIV has ever made, co-written with A. G. Cook." Whittington directed that video too. The same release says the band played ZIRP! songs live for the first time at a New York show that week.

DIIV: Trillions

The ZIRP! tracklist

The Apple Music listing and Bandcamp print the same 11 songs in the same order:

  1. The Fountain
  2. Kid
  3. When The Glow Came For Us
  4. Dare Me
  5. The Crash
  6. Trillions
  7. Us Against You
  8. Evangelizer
  9. Underground
  10. My Star
  11. Idiot In The Sky

The three singles sit at tracks 1, 2 and 6. The other eight stay locked until Friday.

DIIV: ZIRP!

Where the title comes from

Concord says the album is "named for the zero interest rate policies that drew us into a world of failed startups." It follows 2024's Frog in Boiling Water, per Pitchfork.

My read

Bands bring in an outside producer to get pushed, and it doesn't always land. When it works, you hear a band forced out of habit, like Pearl Jam when Andrew Watt pushed them to record fast, or Dry Cleaning when they brought in Cate Le Bon after Stumpwork. What Cook and Smith describe sounds like that kind of push: drums first, fewer computer passes, decisions made quickly. Friday's credits will show who else was in the room.

Dani Reyes, Behind the Boards. Credits check: A. G. Cook on 'Trillions'.

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