Lead Single Follows Five-Week No. 1
& Most-Played Song of 2025, “High Road”

The Night Champion World Tour Underway Now

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Koe Wetzel charges back to Country Radio this week with “Hurts Like You,” the lead single from his highly anticipated sixth studio album, The Night Champion, arriving June 12 via Columbia Records. “Hurts Like You” follows a landmark radio run for Wetzel’s Double-Platinum certified “High Road” featuring Jessie Murph, which spent five consecutive weeks at No. 1 and became the most-played song at Country Radio for all of 2025. 

Written by Wetzel alongside Ashley Gorley, Steph Jones, Carrie K and producer Gabe Simon, the jaggedly propulsive “Hurts Like You” offers the raw intensity fans expect, but with a vulnerability and surrender to desires that cut you open.

        I’ll walk through fire 
        If it burns like you
        Hold me like a knife
        Baby cut me right in two
        Drag me through the dirt like you always do 
        I can take the pain if it hurts like you 

“‘Hurts Like You’ was one of the first songs that we wrote for the record,” Wetzel recalls. “It’s kind of about a toxic relationship; whenever you get into those situations, you know it’s not good for you, but there’s just something about it that keeps bringing you back. It’s hard to get away from. I feel like a lot of people go through that, so I hope people can relate to the way that we felt about it.”

Critics are already embracing the track’s sharp-edged energy and crossover appeal, with VICE praising the song as “an alt-rock revival… the Texas-born rocker blends Country & Western with post-grunge in a way that scratches so many itches. ‘Hurts Like You’ has grit, but never sacrifices melody. It’s relentlessly catchy, but it still has balls.”

Set for release June 12, The Night Champion captures the aftermath of a wild run, delivering all the signature force, punch and ragged details people expect, tempered by the clarity that comes with surviving it. Turning chaos, excess and hard-earned perspective into something built to endure, The Night Champion fuses all that’s happened since Wetzel first hit the road with a van and the drive to see how far he could take it.

“It’s a continuation of 9 Lives, from that record to now,” Wetzel offers of the follow-up to his globally connecting release. “Really, it’s everything that’s happened – because you don’t go from kids playing for beer to headlining Red Rocks, arenas all over the country, partying and trying to make sense of it all and not shift. My head space is clearer now. I can look back, see how it fits together. It doesn’t make sense, exactly, but it all happened. That search for what it all means keeps bringing me back.”

Whether fans were there from those first nights in Texas, the wake of his indie breakout Noise Complaint or found the music during last year’s radio rush, The Night Champion is built to offer a sense of all the phases as it brings the disparate audiences together. “I’m not torn between the worlds,” Wetzel notes of the convergence. “This is where all the fans meet. No matter when they got here, this is that moment.”

Pollstar’s “firebrand live sensation” is also bringing the new music to fans across the globe with The Night Champion World Tour, having recently wrapped his Australia run with dates across the U.S. and Canada to come. Shane Smith & The Saints, Ole 60, Wyatt Flores, Corey Kent, Wade Bowen, Bayker Blankenship, Kolby Cooper and Logan Jahnke join as support in varying combinations.

For more information and to purchase tickets to all upcoming shows, visit KoeWetzelMusic.com. Follow on TikTok @Koe_Wetzel and on Instagram and Facebook @KoeWetzelMusic.

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The Night Champion World Tour Dates
Support Details Available via KoeWetzelMusic.com
July 8 | Edmonton, Alb. (Canada) | Rogers Place
July 10 | Penticton, B.C. (Canada) | South Okanagan Event Center
July 11 | Abbotsford, B.C. (Canada) | Abbotsford Centre
July 23 | Nampa, Idaho | Ford Idaho Center Amphitheater
July 24 | Stateline, Nev. | Lake Tahoe Amphitheatre at Caesars Republic
July 25 | Las Vegas, Nev. | The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas
July 30 | Airway Heights, Wash. | Northern Quest Casino
July 31 | Bend, Ore. | Hayden Homes Amphitheater
Aug. 1 | Tacoma, Wash. | Dune Peninsula
Aug. 6 | Bonner Springs, Kan. | Azura Amphitheater
Aug. 7 | Evansville, Ind. | Ford Center
Aug. 8 | Nashville, Tenn. | Bridgestone Arena
Aug. 12 | New York, N.Y. | Pier 17
Aug. 13 | Reading, Pa. | Santander Arena
Aug. 14 | Gilford, N.H. | BankNH Pavilion
Aug. 19 | Boston, Mass. | Leader Bank Pavilion
Aug. 20 | Washington, D.C. | The Anthem
Aug. 21 | Pittsburgh, Pa. | Petersen Events Center
Aug. 26 | Buffalo, N.Y. | Outer Harbor Live at Terminal B
Aug. 27 | Cleveland, Ohio | Wolstein Center
Aug. 28 | Rochester Hills, Mich. | Meadow Brook Amphitheatre
Sept. 3 | Austin, Texas | Moody Center
Sept. 4 | Baton Rouge, La. | Raising Cane’s River Center
Sept. 5 | Bossier City, La. | Brookshire Grocery Arena
Sept. 10 | Knoxville, Tenn. | Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center
Sept. 11 | Greensboro, N.C. | First Horizon Coliseum
Sept. 12 | Wilmington, N.C. | Live Oak Bank Pavilion
Sept. 17 | Alpharetta, Ga. | Ameris Bank Amphitheatre
Sept. 18 | Columbia, S.C. | Colonial Life Arena
Sept. 19 | Richmond, Va. | Virginia Credit Union LIVE!
Sept. 24 | Pikeville, Ky. | Appalachian Wireless Arena
Sept. 25 | Huntsville, Ala. | The Orion Amphitheater
Sept. 26 | Brandon, Miss. | Brandon Amphitheater
Sept. 30 | Rogers, Ark. | The Walmart AMP
Oct. 1 | North Little Rock, Ark. | Simmons Bank Arena
Oct. 2 | Tulsa, Okla. | BOK Center
Oct. 3 | Wichita, Kan. | INTRUST Bank Arena
Oct. 8 | Chicago, Ill. | Salt Shed Fairgrounds
Oct. 9 | Fishers, Ind. | Fishers Event Center
Oct. 10 | Milwaukee, Wis. | Fiserv Forum
Oct. 28 | Morrison, Colo. | Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Oct. 30 | Lubbock, Texas | Cook’s Garage

Additional Live Shows
May 30 | Panama City Beach, Fla. | Gulf Coast Jam  
June 12 | Del Mar, Calif. | San Diego County Fair  
June 14 | Santa Rosa, Calif. | Country Summer Music Festival
June 20 | Lewisburg, W.Va. | Wild Trails Festival  
June 27 | Ashland, Neb. | Country Drive Music Festival  
July 3 | Winnipeg, Man. (Canada) | Country Thunder Winnipeg  
July 16 | Eau Claire, Wis. | Country Jam USA  
July 17 | Manchester, Iowa | Delaware County Fair  
Aug. 15 | Montreal, Que. (Canada) | Lasso  
Aug. 22 | Lima, Ohio | Allen County Fair  
Aug. 29 | Lucknow, Ont. (Canada) | Lucknow’s Music in the Fields 
Oct. 16 | Salt Lake City, Utah | Red West Music Festival
Oct. 18 | Tucson, Ariz. | Boots in the Park
Nov. 20 | St. Petersburg, Fla. | St. Pete Country Fest  

About Koe Wetzel
Roughneck, rule-breaking, red-dirt rocking, Koe Wetzel forged a harder kind of country that drew on grunge, rock and Texas’s outlaw sound. Starting as a kid in a beat-up van, he rose to regional then national prominence as – as Rolling Stone said – “the ultimate if-you-know-you-know artist.” Headlining arena tours even before signing with Columbia, his raw, unabashed music that prompted the cover headline on touring bible Pollstar “Red Dirt Renegade Smashes Confines and Rocks the F out!” found even greater success in the mainstream. Triple-Platinum hit “High Road,” his debut Country radio single, spent five weeks at No. 1 – and became the most played record of 2025. The Night Champion, his wildly anticipated new project arriving June 12, amplifies all the pieces of Wetzel’s musical attack to deliver an album that takes 2025’s American Music Awards Favorite Rock Album and Favorite Country Song nominee to deeper places.

Exhaustively touring the U.S., Europe and Australia, Wetzel built a global audience, amassing over 6 billion worldwide audio streams en route to 15 RIAA certifications. Having appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” “This Past Weekend with Theo Von,” covers of USA Today, the LA Times, Pollstar, Billboard and more, he kicked off 2026 playing to over 70,000 fans at the storied Houston Rodeo. His 50+ date The Night Champion World Tour sees the fever pitch growing for the Pittsburg, Texan who’s tough, tender, ready to shoot out the lights, but also willing to reckon with where he comes from.

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