BANDINFO

The Viennese indie trio DIVES presented a great debut album with “Teenage Years Are Over” – now the longed-for 2nd studio album is in the making and first unreleased songs from it will already be heard live during the festival season of 2022!

When the Viennese trio DIVES swept 2017 years with its debut single “Shrimp” as a fresh breeze on Austrian’s indie pop parquet, it felt like everything would fall into place. A prominent bassline, just the right rumbling drums, plus surf guitar and the harmonic dance of two voices playing around and complementing each other: A song like a summer day, spontaneous and intense, slightly wistful and a tad too short, and it laid the foundation for a cornucopia of other good songs that Tamara Leichtfried, Viktoria Kirner and Dora de Goederen would go on to write. They bear titles like “Nightdrive”, “Waiting” or “Tomorrow” and tell of friendships and longings, of self-care and cohesion against the cold from outside. “How can you feel when your hearts are made of stone?” is a question that “Tomorrow” addresses again and again to a “you”. Music as an antidote against brutalization: DIVES songs give support and have attitude. With the relieved exclamation “Teenage Years Are Over” in album title form, DIVES then also took the long haul in style in the fall of 2019 after their debut EP. Again, garage rock and surf pop, Breeders harmony vocals and ’90s-flavored indie came together for the band’s grand feat, heralding the fall of the patriarchy with wink and nonchalance. For the end of insecurities and teenage angst from the album title also goes hand in hand with the various responsibilities of adulthood, and this is possibly the bad news for those who still believe that their – albeit naive – everyday sexism should be taken as a compliment.

“He didn’t mean it,” this earworm of a phrase from every woman’s life* DIVES also picked up in their single “Burger,” one of the band’s first signs of life since their album’s victory lap through numerous feuilletons and annual best lists. There is also a unique music video project for “Burger” (directed and realized by Sarah Kreuz), including a specially programmed game that can be played online (realized by KINAYA STUDIOS). In the game, we follow a talking burger through various stages of the everyday sexism towards women, dealt with in the song, accompanied by a special 8-bit remix of the single as an own sound design to the 80s game style. DIVES worked exclusively with women from the fields of 2D/3D animation and game development.

The single “Streets” sets free feelings of longing for long nights and balmy summer evenings, about not wanting to go home, being distracted and letting go. The song captures a moment of those special evenings through which one floats, weightless, free of ballast and with one’s head in the clouds: imagine the summer was not yet over, the bubbles would flow forever and every sunrise would be a harbinger of the next roaring party.
And the party goes on – because DIVES know what they can do, what makes them three and what songs they want to write. With their first longplayer they have joined the ranks of the great indie bands of Europe and have played over 150 shows in 13 countries. The new album “Wanna Take You There”, to be released in October 2022, will be a continuation of the band’s history, a testimony to musical coalescence and an expression of newly learned ways of working during the pandemic. As usual, varied but true to the unmistakable DIVES sound, light-footed but self-confident.

With their latest single “Ego” (May 2022), which may surprise one or the other old-established Dives fan soundwise, DIVES invited to stroll around outside, roller skating or cruising around with the top down. Including clever lyrics and statements against social bullshit, selfishness and narcissism. The song is about strange conversations, about people who never listen and always just keep talking, who lead monologues instead of discussions. “You got to listen and stop, listen and stop,” the lyrics say. “This conversation is too odd, you better shut it up”. “EGO” is another harbinger DIVES’ second album “Wanna Take You There” , out in October 2022.