The duo began teasing the era in January 2021 by updating their social media headers with an orange-tinged photo of the duo in an empty venue, the band's Trench era logo placed between them. The following month, Joseph posted a selfie to his Instagram story featuring a blue psi symbol over his right eye. On April 2, 2021, a progress bar appeared on dmaorg.info—a website the band uses to share background stories and lore—which appeared to be deleting files. When the progress bar timed out three days later, three posters appeared on the page announcing a new album titled Scaled and Icy and a "Livestream Experience" scheduled for May 21, 2021. The lead single "Shy Away" premiered on BBC Radio 1 on April 7, with a music video being released shortly after alongside an official album announcement on the band's social media. A second single, "Choker", premiered on the band's livestream pre-access website, with fans participating in a release event. The music video and single were premiered on April 30, 2021, at 12:00am ET. The third single from the album, "Saturday", was released on May 18, 2021, with a music video for the song released on July 8, 2021. The song "The Outside" was released as a single for the album on November 24, 2021. On March 18, 2022, the duo released a music video for the song "The Outside".
