Cafuné didn’t mean to go viral. Their sensational track Tek It off their first record Running was a bittersweet indie-pop anthem born in a Brooklyn apartment. It was looped, warped, and algorithmically blessed into a billion-stream phenomenon. With its heart-on-sleeve chorus, the track became TikTok’s nightcore soundtrack, replayed by a billion strangers looping its ache into infinity.
Now the duo is gearing up to release their second record Bite Reality. Running was a daydream, an album that floated above the claustrophobia of lockdown, reaching for light through glimmering synths and indie-pop haze; Bite Reality is the rude awakening.
Liminul previewed Bite Reality before its September 12 release, and it’s less of a product and more of a provocation. Cafuné, turning away from the algorithm, confronts what it means to be human.
Lyrically, the record sharpens its blade against the static of internet ennui, the hollow churn of self-commodification, and the raw human need to feel alive. These sentiments are especially prevalent in track 3 e-Asphyxiation, a jagged anthem aching for pre-internet chaos. When Sedona Schat sings, “I don’t want to post my face anymore,” it lands like a weary sigh from internet burnout turned into catharsis. Schat’s vocals cut through against heavy, unrelenting drums and Yoo’s guitar, frayed at the edges with distortion and static.
justwhenuthought is one of the album’s darker corners. The lyrics repeat in cycles: “Just when you thought you had it, just when you thought you had control.” The mantra digs in over grunge-soaked guitars and relentless drums. The distortion feels like a song pulled from the shadow side of the 90s, claustrophobic but magnetic.
The album closes with Old Issues, the record’s twelfth track and most in tune with the dream-pop shimmer of their viral hit Tek It. The vocals are bright and clear, the guitar and drums working together to quietly propel the song forward with a bittersweet lift. Yet the lyrics pull against the brightness, reflecting on isolation in the digital age: “I’ve become someone who can’t talk to strangers / Maybe better bein’ alone / I won’t say I was always this way / There’s things time can heal on its own.” It’s a graceful ending, both nostalgic and unresolved. Reminding us that Cafuné’s ache for connection is still threaded through the noise. “At the end of the day, all we have is one another.” The band states, “You can’t take anything with you when the lights go out. Embrace the future, bite reality.” It’s a fitting send off.
It’s a little ironic: an album railing against algorithms and digital fatigue ends up steeped in its own kind of nostalgia. Beneath the distortion and catharsis, Bite Reality aches for a messier era, a time before feeds, before filters, when music felt like something you held in your hands. Listening to it at times feels like cracking open a jewel case, sliding a disc into a CD player, and letting the room fill.
Soon, Cafuné will take that feeling on the road. Beginning September 19, the duo will launch their headline Alive Online Tour, playing the largest rooms of their career to date with support from crushed. The run promises the same mix of catharsis and intimacy, proof that even in an algorithmic age, human connection still happens loud, messy, and in person.
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Jenny is the editor-at-large at Liminul.
Ex-tumblr girl, flâneuse, art history grad, and staunch defender of the Oxford comma.