AJR is notorious for teasing songs, mostly because experimenting with sounds excites themselves just as much as new music does for their fans. However, they faced some backlash after over-teasing their previous single, “I Won’t,” for so long before its eventual release. As part of an Instagram Story Q&A on October 25, 2022, Ryan promised they learned their lesson.

The first tease of the song came on August 21, 2022, when Jack shared a video to Twitter of him and Ryan playing a snippet of a song they were currently working on while on the international leg of THE OK ORCHESTRA TOUR. On August 30, they shared a follow-up video to Twitter with a snippet that started just before the last one. They later shared the snippet as a TikTok audio and used it in a few videos (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), hoping to promote the song’s eventual release.

November 13 brought the single’s title, artwork and release date. A couple days later, on November 15, a YouTube Short provided yet another snippet paired with some behind-the-scenes content from the music video before the song’s full release later that week.

Amidst all this, at the end of September, AJR updated the link in their Instagram profile to a pre-save link for the song.

While a full behind-the-scenes video has not been released, the band has shared some clips from the shooting of the music video for “The DJ Is Crying For Help.”

The first was shared via Twitter and Instagram on November 15, 2022, three days before the song’s and accompanying music video’s release to help promote them both.

The video shows frontman and brother Jack running around the Escultura “Tierra de México en Tierra de Francia,” or the sculpture “Land of Mexico in Land of France,” for Austin Roa, AJR’s touring photographer and emerging videographer. It acts as a sort of before-and-after video showing the simple but creative ideas AJR use in their music videos and how they are achieved.

A similar video was shared via Twitter and Instagram on November 19, the day after the song and music video’s release.

It is another video showing Jack and Austin recording a running gimbal shot, although brother and producer Ryan is also helping by singing along with the song to cue Jack and running alongside Austin to make sure he doesn’t run into anything he can’t see while he runs backwards.

Both videos show the limited budget the music video had, similar to most of their other videos. While they may be shooting at the exotic location that is Paris, France, it is only because they were already touring there the weekend of October 9 for the international leg of THE OK ORCHESTRA TOUR. Additionally, rather than having a full video crew to have a typical multi-day shoot, they instead use natural light and shoot in their free time during the day before they perform at night. The special effects are similar to the ones done for the music video for the band’s previous single, “I Won’t,” and the music videos for the “Overture” series in that they rely heavily on the footage that is captured rather than created visuals that often require a larger team and more time to produce, both of which are expensive.