TV on the Radio released Seeds through Harvest Records on November 18, 2014. Their fifth studio album was the first since bassist Gerard Smith’s death in 2011, and it followed a period when continuing together had been uncertain. Guitarist Dave Sitek produced the record at his home studio in Los Angeles.
“Happy Idiot” introduced the album in September, followed by a music video starring Paul Reubens and Karen Gillan. Reubens played a race car driver whose grip on reality was slipping. Tunde Adebimpe had taken that unlikely premise to Funny or Die, which agreed to make it happen. Adebimpe’s premise turned the album’s lead single into a surreal racing story.
The return had begun before the album announcement. TV on the Radio released “Mercy” and “Million Miles” in 2013 through Sitek’s Federal Prism label. Those standalone songs put new work into circulation between Nine Types of Light and Seeds, while the band worked out what another record together could be. For the album sessions, Sitek’s house gave them space to develop ideas as they recorded. Kyp Malone told The Line of Best Fit that members arrived with demos and also wrote material there, reshaping arrangements by adding and removing parts. He described the northern Los Angeles setting as more comfortable for the group than their previous experience of staying in Beverly Hills and commuting to Sitek’s studio. The working relationship was familiar; the surroundings felt easier.
They also put limits on how long an idea could occupy them. Adebimpe told TIME that the band entered the studio with roughly 65 sketches. If a song wasn’t finished within two or three days, they moved on. He credited that pace with the record’s clarity and simplicity: decisions had to be made before a promising idea disappeared under too much reconsideration. “Careful You” shows how that process could work. Jaleel Bunton told The Stranger that he and Sitek developed its foundation during an electronic jam, connecting keyboards, drum machines and sequencers to a shared clock. After about an hour, they had something the others wanted to pursue. Adebimpe added words and a vocal melody, and the group began taking the arrangement apart. Bunton emphasized that computers and electronic instruments were part of the writing itself, making a home studio particularly useful for a band whose songs developed through recording.
There was room for guitar-driven material, too. Sitek told The Line of Best Fit that “Lazerray” existed before the album’s writing sessions began. He wanted the record to have balance, giving its gentler passages a counterweight. That helped make space for the harder attack of “Winter” and “Lazerray” late in the running order, alongside the electronics and layered voices elsewhere.
The title came from another song written and recorded early in the process. Bunton explained that “Seeds” gradually became the name that stuck, and connected it to the decision to keep the band going. “This album was a restart,” he told The Stranger. After a break during which their future had been unresolved, the closing song gave the completed record its name.
