Death Cab for Cutie's 11th studio album, I Built You A Tower, marks the band's return to their independent roots. Produced and engineered by John Congleton and assembled from a mere three weeks of sessions, the album was recorded at Animal Rites in Los Angeles, as well as the band members' homes in Seattle, Bellingham, Los Angeles and Portland. The album's first single, "Riptides," is the band's 9th #1 at Adult Alternative radio.

In recent years, the band celebrated several historic milestones, including massive sold-out tours celebrating the 20th anniversaries of seminal releases Transatlanticism and Plans. Those tours were pivotal to the creation of I Built You A Tower, as behind the scenes, Ben Gibbard weathered the greatest pressure of his professional life -- fronting both Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service on arena stages for hours a night -- while struggling with the collapse of his personal life in the background. The strain felt too much for one person to bear, and the "tower" originated as a way to protect himself. "There's this need to find a place in ourselves to put loss and grief," he explains. "A place that can hold it so we can move on with our lives. But there are these moments where the trauma breaks out of that shell we created for it.