Free Yourself Up is Lake Street Dive’s second album with Nonesuch Records. The band self-produced the album at Goosehead Palace Studios in Nashville with engineer Dan Knobler.

To Lake Street Dive, the title, Free Yourself Up, is both an exhortation to listeners and a statement of purpose for the band. In many ways, this is the band's most intimate and collaborative record, with the band working as a tightly knit unit to craft its ten songs. For this album, the quartet was joined in the studio by touring keyboardist Akie Bermiss. Adding another player to the process freed up the band members to explore a wider range of instrumental textures, construct more full-bodied arrangements, and build on their well-known background harmonies.

Free Yourself Up is the follow-up to the band's Nonesuch Records debut Side Pony. The band toured eighteen months for that album, including an Australian appearance at Woodford Folk Festival 2016/17. Their Side Pony album was lauded in the press, with Rolling Stone calling it "irresistible," and the Boston Globe saying, "Side Pony is a confident, expertly played statement from a band that's been honing its approach for more than a decade, and it clearly shows that Lake Street Dive is ready to make itself known to whatever audiences have yet to succumb to its many charms."