Cheekface

Cheekface is an indie rock trio, more precisely a talk-singing band, from Los Angeles.

The story starts in 2017. Things were getting pretty crappy on Earth. Indie rock lifers Greg and Mandy got together to write out the anxiety, despair and the bleak humor of it all. They sent the demos to Echo and, voila, a band.

It wasn’t a project that started with much ambition: the idea was to drop a record on Bandcamp and call it a day. But in 2018, the band’s second single “Dry Heat/Nice Town,” a playful pub rock tune about leftist protest culture, started to snowball online. A word-of-mouth cult started to form, and it intensified with Cheekface’s community-minded singalong shows. Fans dubbed themselves “Cheek Freaks.”

The band chased their 2019 debut LP “Therapy Island” with 2021’s “Emphatically No,” which bowed as Bandcamp’s top-selling alternative album. Their 3rd LP “Too Much to Ask” in 2022 was a watershed moment: it shot to #2 on the non-commercial radio chart, and The Needle Drop proclaimed it one of the year’s best albums. Cheekface’s 4th album “It’s Sorted” came out January 22, 2024. Touring to support “It’s Sorted,” the band sold out shows...

Pacing is the songwriting and recording project of Katie McTigue. McTigue’s writing style has been described as “tongue firmly planted in cheek” (Surviving the Golden Age), “distinctively sardonic” (Various Small Flames), and “I don’t get it” (multiple sources). She describes her listeners as “kids who were raised by Kimya Dawson into anxious adults who love Sidney Gish.”

Pacing’s sound is grounded by McTigue’s Floridian folk and bluegrass origins, but covers a lot of ground, from indie pop to punk. Her arrangements center around her crystal clear voice, with creative backing vocals and foley that emphasize her storytelling and humor. Pacing has built a small but passionate community online where she is known for music memes and crowd-sourced art projects. Her debut mixtape hatemail centers around the idea of indulging in self-deprecation as a form of immersion therapy, poking fun at how ridiculous our internal monologues can sound sometimes. The project culminated in a video incorporating hundreds of anonymously submitted “deepest insecurities”, which fans uploaded to the website

Pacing is the songwriting and recording project of Katie McTigue. McTigue’s writing style has been described as “tongue firmly planted in cheek” (Surviving the Golden Age), “distinctively sardonic” (Various Small Flames), and “I don’t get it” (multiple sources). She describes her listeners as “kids who were raised by Kimya Dawson into anxious adults who love Sidney Gish.”

Pacing’s sound is grounded by McTigue’s Floridian folk and bluegrass origins, but covers a lot of ground, from indie pop to punk. Her arrangements center around her crystal clear voice, with creative backing vocals and foley that emphasize her storytelling and humor. Pacing has built a small but passionate community online where she is known for music memes and crowd-sourced art projects. Her debut mixtape hatemail centers around the idea of indulging in self-deprecation as a form of immersion therapy, poking fun at how ridiculous our internal monologues can sound sometimes. The project culminated in a video incorporating hundreds of anonymously submitted “deepest insecurities”, which fans uploaded to the website anxiety.place.

In March 2023 Pacing surprised everyone including herself with the release of “Snake Facts,” a trio of informative songs about snakes that it turns out are actually not that informative, and are more about humanity, death, and taxes. Grimy Goods described the release as “deceptively sardonic but emotionally gripping music.” A limited edition run of hand-made “Snake Facts” CDs (made of plastic sushi grass, junk mail, and pressed plants) sold out in 27 minutes.

In October 2023, Pacing released her first full-length album Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen. It was named Best Folk Music by Bandcamp Daily, and cemented Pacing as a leader in a new wave of anti-folk music reminiscent of the early 2000s New York scene; one born in an era that is distinctly Very Online. Pacing is based in San Jose, CA and plays frequently around the Bay Area as a trio with Ben Krock on guitars and Joe Sherman on drums. In 2024, Pacing joined San Jose’s own legendary punk and indie label Asian Man Records and released Real Poetry on vinyl.