Seattle’s Deep Sea Diver will release Billboard Heart, their fourth album, and wide-screened Sub Pop debut worldwide on Friday, February 28th, 2025. The new long-player 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 today’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.” 

Deep Sea Diver has also announced a headlining North American tour in support of Billboard Heart, which begins Saturday, March 29th in Walla Walla, WA at The Motor Co. and runs through Saturday, May 17th with a hometown show in Seattle at the Showbox at the Market. Fan presales begin Wednesday, January 8th at 10 am ET, with tickets for these shows on sale to the general public on Friday, January 10th at 10 am (local). For more information on tickets, visit Deep Sea Diver’s tour dates page. Please find a complete list of dates below. 
 

 
Billboard Heart will be available on CD/LP/DSPs from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com (US), Mega Mart 2 (UK/EU), Deep Sea Diver’s Official Website, Bandcamp, and your local record store will receive the limited Loser edition vinyl on Transparent Pink (North America), Glacial Blue (Bandcamp North America), and Opaque Pink (UK/Europe) (All limited edition vinyl colors available while stock lasts!). The Billboard Heart cover image is shot by photographer Neil Krug and from his “Spirit II” photo series.
 

 
In the middle of July 2023, in a Los Angeles studio, Deep Sea Diver mastermind Jessica Dobson took a guitar solo but somehow felt nothing. Just days earlier, her Seattle band played a series of semi-secret shows for devotees at a hometown bar, de facto rehearsals for cutting a new record. The sets had gone well, but, almost immediately, the sessions didn’t. The songs’ essence seemed muddled, Dobson’s conviction lost somewhere in the 1,000 miles between Southern California and the home studio she shares with partner, drummer, and frequent cowriter Peter Mansen. On that first night in Los Angeles, she broke down, wondering what she was doing there, what her band could do to fix it. For the first time ever, Deep Sea Diver retreated, heading home without an album. Did they need to scrap it all, to begin again with new material?
 
Not at all: Following a brief break, Dobson found a renewed sense of self, a trust in her vision for her band and songs and her ability to capture them. After that Los Angeles hiccup, longtime collaborator Andy Park asked Dobson how the new stuff was going over an early fall dinner. She admitted she needed help. In that humbling confession, she soon found ways of working that helped her reimagine and reinvigorate Deep Sea Diver and led directly to the power and brilliance of Billboard Heart, Deep Sea Diver’s fourth album and first for Sub Pop. 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 11 songs, the beating heart that makes everything here feel like a new anthem for finding your own way forward.
 
The cocksure Bad Seeds swagger of “Shovel,” the tender mercies of “Loose Change,” the serpentine machinations of “Let Me Go,” where Dobson tangles with fellow guitar dynamo Madison Cunningham: 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 (read more at Sub Pop).

Deep Sea Diver
Billboard Heart
 
Tracklisting:
1. Billboard Heart
2. What Do I Know
3. Emergency
4. Shovel
5. Tiny Threads
6. Loose Change
7. Always Waving Goodbye
8. Let Me Go (feat. Madison Cunningham)
9. Be Sweet
10. See in the Dark
11. Happiness Is Not a Given

Today, September 19th, Sub Pop is announcing the signing of Deep Sea Diver, the Seattle-based rock band led by guitarist and vocalist Jessica Dobson, to release their music to the world and beyond. You can now watch the official video for “Billboard Heart,”  a new song from their forthcoming album, due in early 2025.
 
The video was directed by Dobson, her Deep Sea Diver bandmate and partner Peter Mansen, and cinematographer Tyler Kalberg. 
 
The rapturous “Billboard Heart” is a stunning introduction to Deep Sea Diver’s universe. The song puts Dobson and her band in the company of St. Vincent, TV on the Radio, and Flock of Dimes, bands that have found 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 with this new song and forthcoming album. As she howls during “Billboard Heart” she is “welcoming the future by letting go of it.”
 
Dobson offers this on the song, “‘Billboard Heart” is a song that felt like a strange transmission, a new emotion, and a spirit-filled dream when it came. It is my nod to the simplicity of my favorite Tom Petty songs and to my love for Wim Wenders’ film Paris, Texas. The feeling of standing in the lonesome desert, embracing every particle of yourself, even the ones that are hard to look at, and fighting for your spirit to move through this world without entanglement. It is about being present and embracing the future while wholeheartedly letting go of any amount of control that I think I have in this life. ‘Billboard Heart’ is both a longing for something that may not exist and a place where I can be free.”
 
“Billboard Heart” is Deep Sea Diver’s first new music since Impossible Weight, the band’s Billboard charting album from 2020. It includes the title track duet with Sharon Van Etten and “Stop Pretending,” which made “NPR Music’s “100 Best Songs of 2020.” Impossible Weight was also #1 on KEXP’s “Top 90.3 Albums of 2020” list.
 
In addition to her work as Deep Sea Diver, Dobson has logged time as a touring member for Beck and The Shins and has performed with numerous other musicians including Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Spoon, Boeckner, and Dinosaur Jr. In addition to headline touring, they’ve supported the likes of Death Cab for Cutie and Wilco. Most recently, Deep Sea Diver played to the largest audiences of their career, supporting Pearl Jam twice within the last year — first with a handful of dates in the Fall of 2023 and, more recently, a lengthier run in May 2024.
 
Earlier this month, Deep Sea Diver covered Yo La Tengo’s “Stockholm Syndrome” for the Every Possible Way benefit compilation which is raising money and awareness for gun safety (see Rolling Stone news story, September 6th).
 
Deep Sea Diver is singer and multi-instrumentalist Jessica Dobson, drummer Peter Mansen, and keyboardist Elliot Jackson.