Illuminati Hotties heading for Baker City

Published 3:00 am Monday, February 10, 2025

BAKER CITY — She won a Grammy for engineering work on boygenius’ 2023 album “The Record” and sang vocals for a song on the TV series “Ahsoka,” and this month Sarah Tudzin and the Illuminati Hotties are coming to Baker City.

The Los Angeles-based indie rock band plays Monday, Feb. 17, at Churchill School, 3451 Broadway St. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the music starts at 6:45 p.m.

Tickets are $18 in advance at churchillbaker.com or $25 at the door. Admission is free for ages 15 and younger who attend with a paid adult. Bone Haus opens the show.

Tudzin started playing music at a young age, first the piano and then drums.

“I didn’t ever want to do anything else,” she said.

She started engineering and producing music in college and formed Illuminati Hotties in 2017 to start making her own records.

They released their first full-length album, “Kiss Yr Frenemies” in 2018, followed by “Free I.H.: This Is Not The One You’ve Been Waiting For” in 2020, “Let Me Do One More” in 2021, and the newest, “Power,” in 2024.

A lot of life happened between those albums.

Just before the 2020 release, she fell in love. Then her mother died of breast cancer.

“As ‘Free I.H.’ became vaunted as one of that upending year’s best surprises, Tudzin stepped away, into both her own grief and the comforting swells of new love. And then, for two years, she worked,” according to press material about her newest album, “Power.”

That fourth album was several years in the making as she worked on records for boygenious, Weyes Blood, Speedy Ortiz, Cloud Nothings and more.

Song snippets, created during her early-morning practice of singing or playing guitar, eventually became seven songs she finished in the Joshua Tree desert.

The songs grew until she had 13 for “Power.”

“Tudzin was at least beginning to unpack life’s insane roller-coaster, beginning to turn it into new Illuminati Hotties songs she could sing and share,” according to the album material. “’Power’ is not a grief record. It is not a love record, either. Instead, it is a real-life record, a reflection of all the things Tudzin has endured or enjoyed during the too-long span since Illuminati Hotties’ wonderfully infectious last batch.”

Tudzin lives in Los Angeles where she balances her own project — Illuminati Hotties — with producing and engineering music for other musicians.

“I get to be in the studio every day,” she said.

That is, when she isn’t touring her own band.

“I feel really happy being able to balance the two,” she said.

Most years are split about 50/50 between the studio and touring, she said.

Her Baker City show is at the end of a tour with Cavetown. She said the Illuminati Hotties are still focused on sharing their most recent album, “Power.”

“I want to play this new record in front of as many people as we can,” she said.

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