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Photo: Noah Falge

Cafuné, made up of Sedona Schat and Noah Yoo, has come a long way since their days as college students. What began as a studio project in the mid-2010s with electronica leanings has since evolved into a passionate live band, drawing from various influences, including early-aughts indie, new wave, and shoegaze.

The pair met during their first year at NYU. In an interview with LADYGUNN, Schat shared that Yoo messaged her on Facebook, and they soon became fast friends. "He messaged me on Facebook before we got to school, and then the first couple months of school we were core, original, freshmen squad...then I started dating someone and went away for a while, and we kind of reconnected when he helped me with a solo project. And it went well, and that summer he crashed at my place, and we wrote a song then. So July 2014 was the official start of the band." They wasted no time and immediately went to work on their debut EP, Love Songs For Other People, releasing singles "Letting Go" and "Fall Asleep Slow" before dropping the complete upbeat and refreshing record in December 2015.

From 2016 to 2018, Schat and Yoo continued to hone their craft and released a multitude of singles, including "Don't You Forget," "Little Broken Part," and "How Can I Explain," and remixes of their previously released music. This all paved the way to the release of what would become their most popular track to date, 2019's "Tek It." The single is the embodiment of the late-night delirium of a disintegrating relationship. At the same time, its B-side "Friction" turned a post-punk groove into palpable cliffs of distorted guitar, but more on "Tek It" later. The duo continued to develop, write songs, and play shows in New York as they worked around their day jobs. The band's sound evolved as they honed their live set and their audiences grew. In late 2019, they began to fill larger venues in the city, ready to launch a new chapter in their creative journey. But then, the pandemic hit, putting those plans on pause indefinitely.

Months in quarantine turned out to be the catalyst Yoo and Schat needed to sit down and finish their debut Cafuné album, Running. Their frustrations and anxieties with the chaotic city around them soaked into songs that had been written pre-COVID. They grappled with how to stay creative, pouring themselves into this self-produced project that was almost entirely recorded by the duo at their homes. The record was born in isolation and examines what it means to be alone. It peers out at a world that feels like it's on the edge of disaster, considering what it means to get older and sculpt a future in an uncertain future. Sonically, the album pushes Cafuné's genre boundaries from alternative pop and shoegaze to neo-noir soft rock, perfect for listening alone in a room, in a sweaty club with all of your friends, or going on long drives imagining somewhere better.

In 2022, the NYC-based duo signed to Elektra Records. To celebrate the announcement, they shared an animated music video for their otherwordly song "Tek It," produced by Natia Sopromadze and directed by Frederick Venet. Although the song was initially released in 2019, the single appeared on the band's debut album and recently went viral on social media. Clips of the song's chorus were especially popular on TikTok, with the infectious lyrics "I watch the moon / Let it run my mood / Can't stop thinking of you" circulating on everyone's timeline and spreading like wildfire. The song has now amassed over 48 million streams on Spotify alone, at the time of writing, and reached the Top 5 on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart. Cafuné has also been announced as direct support to CHVRCHES on their upcoming North American headline tour; check out the duo's upcoming tour dates below.

Cafuné 2022 Tour Dates 

07/19 — Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool* 
07/26 — New Orleans, LA @ Orpheum Theater
07/27 — Birmingham, AL @ Iron City
07/29 — Atlanta, GA @ The Roxy
07/30 — Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
07/31 — Richmond, VA @ The National
08/01 — Norfolk, VA @ The Norva
08/03 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Mirage
08/04 — Boston, MA @ Roadrunner
08/05 — North Adams, MA @ Mass Moca
09/20 — Denver, CO @ Mission
09/22 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Twilight
09/24 — Phoenix, AZ @ Marquee Theatre
09/25 — Los Angeles, CA @ Genghis Cohen*
09/26 — Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades
09/28 — Vancouver, BC @ Queen Elizabeth Theatre
09/30 — Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre
10/01 — Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
10/02 — Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory
10/03 — Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory

*Headlining Performance (w/o CHVRCHES)