Deceiver

DIIV moved toward a heavier guitar sound on Deceiver, placing Zachary Cole Smith's voice inside dense arrangements. “Horsehead” opens the album, followed by “Like Before You Were Born,” as the band establishes a setting built from distortion, repetition and carefully changing layers.

Songs such as “Skin Game” give that sound a more direct shape without abandoning its weight. The album moves between clear melodic lines and passages where the instruments crowd together, making the shifts in texture part of the songs' emotional effect.