MAIN STAGE • SATURDAY, AUGUST 19 • 4:00PM

With their latest single, ‘Paranoid,’ Fake Shark fully embrace their rock influences with an immensely hooky earworm that takes on the day-to-day doubts that, if left to fester, can seriously damage your state of mind. It’s a rare tune. One that manages to be personally revealing and universally relatable; a song anyone who’s felt beaten down by the past two years and change can slip into easily and find their own frustrations and doubts reflected in.

Featuring Chili Peppers-esque guitars, a relentless pop-punk vibe, and substantial depth, sonically and lyrically, ‘Paranoid,’ like all of Fake Shark’s music, finds the band blending the styles of a diverse array of artists and refusing to adhere to a paint-by-numbers, approach.

That’s been a hallmark of the band’s music since they started in 2015 – something that’s reflected in their ability to fearlessly, fluently, and seemingly effortlessly incorporate elements of dance music, pop punk, industrial, funk, EDM, and straight-up pop and rock to create a sound that’s impossible to pigeonhole but uniquely their own. “With each album cycle, what inspires me to make a song changes,”explains lead singer Kevvy Mental.

Fake Shark’s upcoming record, Smaze (their fifth in roughly six years), is no exception. That’s crystal clear on ‘Paranoid,’ a compact rocker that picks up on a thread the band teased out to great effect on their 2021 hit, ‘Loser,’ lyrically and in terms of production. “Ryan Worsley produced that, and when it started doing its thing and charting in North America, we decided to get back in the studio with him to see what would happen.”