Hot on the heels of our reissue of her debut album, Messes, we’re excited to announce the RSD exclusive 7-inch by Stef Chura, Degrees b/w Sour Honey. “Degrees" and "Sour Honey" were both songs cut from Messes, but revived when Stef crossed paths with Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest and a collaboration was born. We’ll let Stef tell the story of these songs and the meeting with Will that led to this 7-inch:

"I met Will Toledo in 2016 when we did some touring together with Car Seat Headrest. We chatted at the Empty Bottle in Chicago at our -first show and he told me that he found my music on Tumblr via a Pitchfork article that compared us to each other. He invited us on a couple of tours that year before Messes was out and before we had a label or booking agent or release plans or any “stuff­.” In May of 2017 we ran into each other again at the Empty Bottle. Will was mixing Twin Fantasy and came out to our gig there with the engineer he’d been working with. He invited us to the studio to check out the record the next day. When we stopped by Will had -finished mixing early and asked us if we had anything going on recording-wise. I said I have a couple of songs that got cut from Messes I want to record for a 7-inch and he was like "Cool, wanna record them right now? I'll play bass.”

"Sour Honey" I wrote during the time that I was a cocktail waitress at a strip club. It's partly about that and mostly about the deeply visceral feeling of embarrassment and bullying: “I'm dripping sour honey, and it all starts to feel funny, I didn't mean to go to places I don't know." It's also in tune with knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway. A theme for Messes, but maybe not an intentional concept? Just a theme I've been through many times in life.

“Degrees" began as a completely -fingerpicked folk song. After Will listened to it he suggested going in a Janis Joplin direction, like the song "Ball and Chain," emphasizing the loud-quiet-loud aspects. We sat and watched a few videos and then practiced it with Ryan Clancy on drums. That's where the song took on a much bigger sound that included drum transitions and organs, solos, all that stu­."

Degrees b/w Sour Honey will be out as a limited-edition 7-inch (1,000 copies) on April 21st, 2018, aka Record Store Day