After finishing their Cinema tour promoting their previous album, María Zardoya and Josh Conway had broken up romantically and the band took a six-month hiatus,[4] including spending four months apart before the first sessions which would later become Submarine.

On May 28, 2024, over 100 record stores across the United States held public listening parties for Submarine, where exclusive merch was sold and the Marías' new album was played.

Writing at the Associated Press, Elise Ryan praised the "genre-bending experimentation that characterized" the band's previous work made up of "varied, lush productions" that listeners "will enjoy sinking into".

[2] Editors at Stereogum chose this as Album of the Week, where Chris DeVille, calling it the "soundtrack of the summer" and he compared the music to Beach House and BadBadNotGood.

[1] On June 4, Stereogum did a roundup of the best albums of the year so far and ranked Submarine at 47, with Chris DeVille stating that it "continues the Marías' mastery of their own unique combination of psych, jazz, lounge, downtempo, dream-pop, and more".