I Wrote You a Letter

The release of M83's previous album, Fantasy, in 2023, marked the debut of Gonzalez's independent music label, named Other Suns, powered by Believe Music. This label would later receive a couple of soundtracks composed by M83 (namely A Necessary Escape, for the 2025 film Dakar: Race Against the Desert, and Resurrection, for the homonymous film directed by Bi Gan), while also hosting studio albums of artists associated with the band, including Kaela Sinclair's Supraliminal and Benoît de Villeneuve's Soul Tuning, both in 2025.^[5] Concurrently, with M83's ninth studio album released, Gonzalez held an artistic priority of touring throughout North America and Europe, and with the conclusion of the shows, he began producing the aforementioned soundtracks and the next full-length album in 2024,^[6] in the continued vision of making cinematic soundscapes for "people to go on big adventures, to feel alive and to forget about the world", as he said in an interview by Clash Music about Fantasy.^[7]

I Wrote You a Letter, according to Gonzalez, was developed based on his mental state over the previous years leading to the album, and brings back some characteristics of the group's early focus on walls of sound and crescendos, mainly reminiscent of shoegaze and indietronica.^[6]

Designed by Jean-Phillipe Talaga, the artwork shows large walls of rock on the sides of an ocean, with clouds in the distance. This photo has a large gradient barrier around it, consisting of three colors blended together.^[8]

Riff Magazine had positive reviews for the album, saying it "offers breathtaking clarity both in its sonic and thematic spaces".^[8]