By that time, DIIV had already started gigging relentlessly all over New York, sometimes playing two shows on the same night. Their dark, drugged-up songs had a lot in common with the internet-generation slacker rock that had been flooding the city’s underground for the past few years, an era marked by cassette-quality production, time-warped guitar tones, and hazy vocals. But something about DIIV’s textured songcraft—the tangled-up riffs, the motorik grooves, and the mind-numbing repetition—made that lo-fi rock formula seem sorta new again. Their music felt like sped-up shoegaze for late-night weirdos, and the band performed it with a gripping, nothing-else-matters punk energy. “Part of it was who we were, who we knew, and what we looked like,” Smith remembers of their early reception, which may have been at least partly influenced by their too-cool, ragamuffin charms. “But it also had to do with the songs, and how much we were willing to play.”