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The Rentals' fourth album was announced alongside the release of the single "Elon Musk Is Making Me Sad" on October 4, 2019.Rentals frontman Matt Sharp tweeted about the album's production at various points throughout 2018,indicating that the album would be engineered by Dave Fridmann, who had previously engineered Weezer's Pinkerton. On December 20 of 2018, Sharp tweeted that the mastering had been finished at Sterling Sound in Nashville, Tennessee. 
In an interview with The Interplanetary Podcast, Sharp explained that he started forming the album by starting with 50 song ideas. Sharp said that his one rule for these new songs was that nothing could be autobiographical, explaining that he had grown bored of writing about his own lived experiences and perspective. Sharp also mentioned that he first became acquainted with guitarist Nick Zinner at a New Years party shortly after Zinner's band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs had performed a live cover of the Rentals song "The Love I'm Searching For" in 2006. Years later, Sharp contacted Zinner again and convinced him to work on the album. Sharp and Zinner worked on the songs independently in their own respective home studios. According to Sharp, engineer Dave Fridmann agreed to work on the album immediately after Sharp pitched the idea of a space-themed album featuring Zinner. 
The album's title was formally unveiled on November 5, 2019 alongside the new single "Spaceships", with pre-orders made available via the band's Bandcamp page. The next single, "Forgotten Astronaut", was unveiled on November 20, 2019, with each subsequent "single" released every other week with an accompanying limited-run clothing/merchandise item designed by illustrator and print designer Ivan Minsloff. On March 24, 2020, the album's physical release and eleventh single were postponed by two weeks due to the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19). 
During the course of the album's release cycle, the band created challenges for fans in conjunction with the collaborative media platform HitRecord. 


On March 31, 2020, a digital EP for the song "Forgotten Astronaut" was released on Spotify and Bandcamp.