He enlisted childhood friend Andrew Bailey (like Smith, from Connecticut) on guitar, bassist Devin Ruben Perez (from New York City), and ex-Smith Westerns drummer Colby Hewitt (from California) as his live band.

Captured Tracks signed the band and released two singles, "Sometime" and "Human", which were recorded solely by Smith and had acted as demos.

[6] In May 2012, the band changed their name to DIIV, according to Smith, "out of respect for Dirk Ivens and the original Dive," a 1990s Belgian industrial group.

[7] "We’ve not been contacted by Dirk Ivens or his lawyers," Smith said in a press release, "but the short of it is that I don’t really give a fuck what the band is called."

"People didn’t seem to pick up on the influence of these Malian guitar players, especially Baba Salah whose record I got at the library," Smith said.

While touring in support of Oshin, DIIV played several unreleased songs live, including "Dust", "Loose Ends", and "Under the Sun".

On July 9, 2014, DIIV performed as Sky Ferreira's opening act at a concert benefiting the David Lynch Foundation.

[29] In an interview with NME in October 2019, bassist Colin Caulfield commented on this period in the band's career, "It definitely felt like an end point...

[32] In the aftermath of Cole’s personal struggles, he "finally accepted what it means to go through treatment and committed," emerging with a renewed focus and perspective.

[40] On the same day, Pitchfork reported their announcement on the new album, and confirmed through a representative of DIIV, that Devin Ruben Perez had been dismissed from the band at the end of 2017.

[45] Upon release, Deceiver reached number 177 on the US Billboard 200 and received critical acclaim as a drastic departure from DIIV's earlier work.

In his review for Q, Dave Everley praised the album, calling it "a success as both an artistic statement and a mea culpa.

"[47] In a positive review, Jordan Bassett of NME wrote, "Where its predecessor was airy and spaced-out, Deceiver packs some seriously heavy riffs, sliding between monster rockers and moon-eyed grunge ballads that wouldn't sound too out of place on an early Smashing Pumpkins record.

The album, Frog in Boiling Water, is titled after Daniel Quinn's metaphor in philosophical novel The Story of B, and refers to the "slow, sick, and overwhelmingly banal collapse of society under end-stage capitalism, the brutal realities we’ve maybe come to accept as normal".