Four years ago, in a vastly different context, Cafuné—the indie-pop powerhouse of NoahYoo and Sedona Schat—releasedRunning, a bionic debut album that soundtracked acollective urge for post-pandemic escapism. That record, Schat says, “is literally allaboutrunning away.” But as the duo enters its tenth year, their foundational questions—ofauthenticity, artificiality, and the existential tension between the two—feel more pressingthan ever. “The entire time that the band has existed,” Schat says, “it’salways been aboutnegotiating between digital manipulation and raw realness.”This moment—one increasingly defined by AI, algorithms, and artificial intimacy—is verymuch a bastion of “digital manipulation” in itself. Recorded in 2024, their new recordfindsthe band at a familiar crossroads, reckoning between real and fake. The difference, thistime around, is that they’re doing it in the real world, too. And it sounds like it.Bite Realitycaptures Cafuné in a confrontational state, no longer runningfrom the bite of reality, butbiting reality back. Their guitars growl; their vocals snarl; their lyrics teem with brutalhonesty, not avoidant analogy. “Self-flagellation is not cute after a certain point,” Yoo says,with a laugh. “That’s not even helpful,” Schat adds. “What helps you to be better is actuallyfacing: What is really wrong, and how do I work through it?”Bite Realityis about the fine line between documenting your existence and doing the workto actually exist. What does humanity look, sound, and feel like in a dehumanizing era?Why prove that you’re alive when you can just live?