Deep Sea Diver Exude Confidence on Billboard Heart
The Seattle band’s fourth album and Sub Pop debut is full of snappy lyrics, impeccable guitar-playing and crisp synthwork in a tight clasp, and the result is indie rock that sounds like it was made with both the confidence of a 22-year-old bursting onto the scene and the wisdom of a veteran player.
Deep Sea Diver are no strangers to the long game. The Seattle band, helmed by singer, songwriter and guitarist Jessica Dobson, released their first album in 2012. They were something of a regional act before 2020, when Impossible Weight helped them reach new audiences, which included a stellar single of the same name featuring indie heavyweight Sharon Van Etten.
Just over three years later, word of their talents became even more widespread, as evidenced by posters on r/pearljam singing the band’s praises: “They can really fill an arena sonically,” one user wrote. That‘s some first-hand knowledge, as that Pearl Jam fan likely saw Deep Sea Diver open for the legendary Seattle grunge rockers during a string of shows in 2023. Whoever was responsible for that concert billing had some serious clairvoyance. Now, in 2025, Dobson’s songs may dot Spotify playlists with titles like “Front Page Indie,” but they’re outliers among the humdrum of bedroom background music that drives the algorithm. Billboard Heart is front-page rock and roll.
While Billboard Heart would make a perfectly lovely backdrop for any number of activities (someone should really put the title track in a movie), it deserves your undivided attention. Snappy lyrics, impeccable guitar-playing and crisp synthwork meet in a tight clasp, and the result is indie rock that sounds like it was made with both the confidence of a 22-year-old bursting onto the scene and the wisdom of a veteran player.
Dobson wrote much of Billboard Heart with her partner and Deep Sea Diver drummer Peter Mansen. The pair more frequently collaborated prior to 2020, and this album matches the springy energy of the band’s earlier material, as Dobson fiercely wields a guitar while electronica ripples underneath each chord. It’s a sampling of sounds native to the Northwest: the stony rhythms of grunge, the blistering guitar of garage rock and the quirky melodies of 2000s indie rock. All of these qualities make the band’s recent jump to Sub Pop—once home to Nirvana and since to legions of alt-rock greats—even more fitting.
While traces of the Pacific Northwest’s grunge legacy can be heard throughout, it’s actually some more contemporary Sub Pop labelmates who Deep Sea Diver better emulate on the major moments of Billboard Heart. “Tiny Threads” channels the frenetic arrangements of Wolf Parade, and the dancey “What Do I Know” has nearly identical pacing to Loma’s “Relay Runner.” The latter introduces the ribbons of darkness that flash across every song on Billboard Heart; Dobson’s writing can be everything from mournful to downright macabre. “There’s a spider in the milkshake I’ve been drinking,” she sings, later discovering something equally grotesque inside herself: “What’s gotten into my soul?”