“The future is now, unfortunately.” This is the Greg Katz line that sticks with me from Cheekface’s new song. “Popular 2” arrives a couple months after the indeed-cheeky LA band kicked off 2023 with “The Fringe.” This one is one of Cheekface’s most emphatically catchy and melodious songs to date, and it contains more of the droll satire Katz is making his name on.

A statement from Katz:

Even though I’m worried about the surveillance state that the government has set up, and many of us rightly think it’s a tool of state oppression, we still spy on our own friends and neighbors and total strangers through our own means that we’ve set up ourselves.

And just like the government, we develop our own paranoiac theories about what those people are doing, but we’re really maybe just reflecting our own loneliness. Me and [bassist] Mandy Tannen wrote this little power pop tune about that little contradiction. Also, the guitar line in the verse is a little inspired by the verse guitar part in Van Halen’s “Panama.” RIP Eddie.

Listen below.

“Popular 2” is out now.