Sweeties is Gabriel Bernini's first record for Dadstache, and his fourth overall, recorded amidst a time of positive change in Bernini's life. After leaving his prior band of 8 years, the NRBQ-indebted LuxDeluxe, then heading out on the road as a keyboardist with Deer Tick in support of their records Volume I and Volume II, Bernini began working on records that would take shape as Gabe's Band. Sweeties started as an attempt to write more guitar oriented hard rock songs, but slowly Bernini's influences and impulses crept in again. "As I kept recording the hard rock record, my more natural voice and recording decisions started to appear again," he writes. "By the end I realized I had just made another Gabe record but maybe with more loud guitars."