Death Cab For Cutie offer up new single ‘Punching the Flowers’

Back in March, Washington indie-rock icons Death Cab For Cutie announced details of their 11th(!) album, and now, they’ve shared a second track from it. 

Lifted from their forthcoming full-length, ‘I Built You A Tower’ (due for release on 5th June via ANTI- Records), their new single, ‘Punching The Flowers’ is a more jagged (but still melodic) offering than most might expect from the band, set to a shifting, almost frustrated beat. “‘Punching the Flowers’ is a song about stagnation and the feeling of being imprisoned by The Known,” the band frontman Ben Gibbard has said of the track. “And about the damage done when someone ventures deeper into the unknown.”

The track doubles as the second preview of their new album, after ‘Riptide’ was shared alongside the album news. Produced alongside the esteemed John Congleton, ‘I Built You A Tower’ was recorded in Animal Rites Studio in LA, as well as the band’s own homes in Seattle, Bellingham, Los Angeles and Portland over a three week period. The album follows on from their previous record ‘Asphalt Meadows’, which landed back in 2022, and their 2024 touring run in which they celebrated the 20th anniversary of their seminal record ‘Transatlanticism’.

Listen to ‘Punching The Flowers’, and revisit our interview with Ben Gibbard, around the anniversaries of ‘Transatlanticism’ and The Postal Service’s ‘Give Up’, below.