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Dec 03, 2024 By Mark Redfern Photography by Mallory Turner

Los Angeles-based indie rock trio Cheekface surprise-released a new album, It’s Sorted, in March. Now they have shared a brand new single, “Hard Mode,” and announced some 2025 tour dates. Listen to it below, followed by the tour dates.

“Hard Mode” follows “Flies,” another new single the band shared in October via an amusing music video. The song features Jeff Rosenstock on baritone saxophone and was one of our Songs of the Week.

Cheekface is vocalist/guitarist Greg Katz, bassist Amanda Tannen (formerly of stellastarr*), and drummer Mark “Echo” Edwards.

Katz had this to say about the song in the press release: “This song is about growth and how fucking awkward it is, and it’s about growth’s younger sibling self-awareness, which is not the same as growth, and twice as awkward. The phrase ‘living life on hard mode’ is something our touring keyboard player AJ likes to say when he does something that makes a routine task needlessly difficult, like reaching for something in a clumsy way when you could just ask someone to hand it to you.”

Katz adds: “I guess being in a band is a pretty hard-mode activity in general. I think the start of this musical idea was us wanting to do a dance song with a skittering hi-hat beat. Mandy came up with the super syncopated bassline and then I added the chunky guitar riff that became the chorus. It started as a really short song idea, maybe just two minutes long. But once the three of us started to learn it, we were having fun with the groove and wanted it to just keep going, so we stretched it out with the instrumental section…. This song also has an outro, which I don’t know if we’ve ever had in a song before––usually they just end. But we were touring this year with Yungatita and their song ‘Pick at Your Face’ has a really nifty outro. After hearing it every night for a month we were duly inspired.”

It’s Sorted includes “The Fringe,” a new song we posted last year that was one of our Songs of the Week. When the album was released they shared a video for “Life in a Bag,” which also made our Songs of the Week list.

Cheekface’s previous album was 2022’s Too Much to Ask. It included the songs “Pledge Drive” and “We Need a Bigger Dumpster.”

Read our interview with Cheekface on It’s Sorted.

Read our review of It’s Sorted.

Cheekface 2025 Tour Dates:

1/23/2025 – Winnipeg, MB – The Park Theatre
1/25/2025 – Edmonton, AB – The Starlite Room
4/3/2025 – San Diego, CA – The Casbah
4/4/2025 – Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar
4/5/2025 – Albuquerque, NM – Launchpad
4/7/2025 – Oklahoma City, OK – Resonant Head
4/8/2025 – Dallas, TX – House of Blues Cambridge
4/9/2025 – Austin, TX – The Ballroom Inside
4/11/2025 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall Up
4/12/2025 – New Orleans, LA – Chickie Wah Wah
4/14/2025 – Orlando, FL – The Social
4/15/2025 – Tampa, FL – Crowbar
4/16/2025 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade Purgatory
4/18/2025 – Nashville, TN – The Basement
4/19/2025 – Asheville, NC – Eulogy
4/20/2025 – Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle Back Room
4/21/2025 – Richmond, VA – Richmond Music Hall
4/23/2025 – Washington, DC – Black Cat
4/24/2025 – Philadelphia, PA – The Foundry
4/25/2025 – New York, NY – Elsewhere Hall
5/3/2025 – Boston, MA – The Sinclair
5/4/2025 – Burlington, VT – Higher Ground Showcase
5/6/2025 – Syracuse, NY – The Song & Dance
5/7/2025 – Toronto, ON – The Axis Club
5/9/2025 – Pittsburgh, PA – Bottlerocket
5/10/2025 – Columbus, OH – Rumba Cafe
5/11/2025 – Detroit, MI – El Club
5/13/2025 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall
5/14/2025 – Madison, WI – High Noon Saloon
5/15/2025 – Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line
5/17/2025 – St Louis. MO – Blueberry Hill Duck Room
5/19/2025 – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theater
5/21/2025 – Boise, ID – The Shredder
5/23/2025 – Seattle, WA – Neumos
5/24/2025 – Vancouver, BC – Wise Hall
5/25/2025 – Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theater
5/27/2025 – San Fransisco, CA – The Independent
5/29/2025 – Los Angeles, CA – The Regent

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