Written by Ella Hardie | Photo “5/25/2026 at Empty Bottle” by Will Blakely

“LOOKING FOR A REASON?”

A reason to… what? To live? To believe? To dance? To laugh? To cry? Or maybe the better question is: What is the reason? Is music the reason? The joy of creation? The joy of friendship? Joy in general? Is it some kind of a Higher Power? What even is “A Reason” in the first place? A band like 103 Fever—whose sheer existence feels like nothing short of a cosmic miracle—somehow answers all of these questions and none of them. 

After months of jamming and collaborating on each other’s solo projects, best friends Mary Jennifer (MaryMary!), Laura Cecelia (Future Nest), and Sage Irene (Friendship City Unlimited) teamed up to form 103 Fever, a self-described “DIY alt-country electronic jam band” that stretches and pokes holes in our conventional conception of country music like it’s Play-Doh. 103 Fever is a God-given testament to the idea of Musical Soulmates, a group of musicians who make ear candy you can suck on, chew on, or swallow whole. If you live in Chicago, you might’ve seen some variation of their “LOOKING FOR A REASON?” show flyers on social media or papered around town: you may remember the one with a drawing of three fish intertwined or the one with three white-snouted horses; maybe the one with a rather forlorn-looking cat; a stoic mutt; a Victorian child sipping a glass of milk. With such elusive, ominous, (forgive me) esoteric branding and no barrier to entry—after all, they were advertising an Empty Bottle Free Monday show—I can’t imagine you wouldn’t be at least a little bit curious.

103 Fever’s extra special debut show took place on May 25th, 2026, a triple-header for Mary, Laura, and Sage, who played exclusively in all three sets—in Mary’s words, “three bands, three girls, three releases, one night, zero dollars.” The lineup was bolstered by familiar names Future Nest and MaryMary! (both of whom have LPs set to release by the end of the year), in addition to the sale of new merch and same-day single releases from each project. Over the course of nearly three hours, Mary, Laura, and Sage only disembarked from the stage to jump into the moshpit with a tambourine, microphone, and cowbell (respectively), and to run up to the green room for quick-changes between sets. For MaryMary!’s closing performance, Sage and Laura reemerged wearing neon safety vests over their bras while Mary donned a white evening gown. When the lights eventually came up, the band shared sweat-soaked embraces to the tune of cheers from every corner of the room. I walked out of Empty Bottle that night with my ears ringing, a new MaryMary! t-shirt, and a big fat smile on my face; if you came in search of a reason, you probably left with several.

5/22/2026: 103 Fever @ [Their Studio]:

This interview features 103 Fever: Mary Jennifer (MaryMary!), Laura Cecelia (Future Nest), and Sage Irene (Friendship City Unlimited). It has been edited and condensed for clarity.

It’s Friday afternoon and the show is on Monday night. Mary greets me at the front door of an unassuming brick building in Pilsen and leads me up the echoey stairs—what once was an industrial building is now a buzzing hub where artists can be as loud and as weird as they want. Upon entering, I count four “LOOKING FOR A REASON?” flyers: in the stairwell, on the walls, on the door to 103 Fever’s studio. In refreshing contrast to the cavernous hallway, 103 Fever’s rehearsal space feels like your cool older cousin’s basement: warm wood paneled walls, shag carpet, a tufted Bart Simpson rug on display, a tv playing UFO 50 on mute, synthesizers, guitars, a drum-kit in the corner, string lights, old Future Nest and MaryMary! show flyers, mini stained glass hanging in the window. We all formally shake hands before sitting/laying on the floor like old friends at a sleepover. The following interview is—pun intended—an absolute fever dream. 

I start recording mid-conversation:

ELLA HARDIE: Let’s just go around with some introductions… Maybe we should start with your solo stuff and then bring it together? Who are you, what kind of music do you make, who wants to go first?

SAGE IRENE: Mary should go first, she just announced her album today—

Mary smiles and clears her throat:

MARY JENNIFER: My name’s Mary Jennifer, I play music as MaryMary!, and I think I make synth-punk… mixed with post-punk-indie-rock… with an electronic edge to it… It’s kinda hard to specifically describe—y’know, it’s synth-punk music you can dance and have fun to. And these two lovely ladies play in my backing band. Sage plays the drums—

LAURA CECELIA: I do bass… and guitar… and synth… and sing…

MJ: And sing—

LC: I do it all… Except for drums, because— 

SI: I got that handled, I got that on lock—

LC: Under the rug—

SI: Under the rug… I cut up the rug onstage… I got big ‘ol shears—

LC: We should start bringing scissors—like, a bunch of scissors, onstage.

SI: After the show we cut all the wires—

LC: “We’re gonna make sure this is the LAST SHOW that Empty Bottle ever plays—”

Laughter.

MJ: These two have been playing in the MaryMary! band since January… Laura for a little longer, since Dream Girl last April, which was a big show that we put together. I’ve been playing with Laura’s project, Future Nest, on-and-off since last July… 

Laura nods. 

MJ: For my solo stuff, I have an album coming out on July 3rd which I’m super excited about. I announced it, as of this interview, today, and it’s called I Love You I’m Glad I Exist, which I’ve been working on for the last two years now. I’m very, very, very psyched for it to finally be coming out—

SI & LC (in perfect sync): MaryMary!’s VeryVeryVery—

MJ: WHOA—

All of us crack up.

SI: Wavelength! These frequencies are amplifying.

***

MJ: Shall we…?

EH: Laura, what kind of music do you make?

LC: I’m Laura Cecelia… I have a lot of music under my belt, but the primary project that I work on is Future Nest, which I would say is an industrial—

SI: It’s like… sex music—

MJ: Industrial sex music—

Laura starts laughing and concedes.

LC: Industrial sex music, I guess—

SI: Very wet … steamy… 

MJ: Metallic—

SI: Metallic … like body-roll—

MJ: Cronenberg’s Crash—

LC: Blood… milk… skin… muscle… wire… metal…

SI: Future Nest makes music for people who: boutique fragrances…

MJ: And no deodorant. No deodorant ever. We’re a No Deodorant Band—

SI: Future Nest makes music for lickin’ sweat off your lover—

LC: For bottling the sweat off your lover—

SI: Bottling it up and saving it for later… Keepin’ it in your fridge, puttin’ ice cubes in it, givin’ it to your guests and not telling them about it—

At this point, we’re all in bits and Laura eventually goes:“Ew that’s GROSS!”

LC: And that’s what Future Nest sounds like!

She laughs.

LC: Future Nest is my main project, and I’m coming out with an album in the fall but I won’t announce a date for it yet… Sage is gonna to be mixing the whole record because she is a wizard. It’s going to be really, really exciting. It’s been, like, seven years in the making—

EH: Oh my God…? When did your last record come out?

LC: The last record came out in 2021, and this one includes remnants of the stuff I was working on at that time that didn’t make the cut, as well as what it’s evolved into. So it’s been about seven years in the process. In Future Nest I sing and perform—most of what I do is just performance. I am very kinetic and very…

SI: It’s a very visceral performance—

LC: 50% of the show, in vocal delivery and body movement, is improvised. 

SI: 50% improv, 50% epic. A million percent epic, though. It’s good shit—

LC: Mary’s played in the band a couple times, she’s done synth and aux-percussion, but on Monday she’s doing…

MJ: Synth and guitar, and some samples—

LC: And Sage is gonna do…

SI: The drums.

EH: Damn, you’re holding it down—

SI: Pretty much. I’m like Animal, I’m uncaged—

MJ: You’re also bright red and fuzzy—

SI: I’m red and fuzzy! Yeah, people say I kinda look like Animal when I drum. Which is cool.

MJ: You’ve got that Muppet bounce—

LC: You’re being puppeted. You’re a vessel for a Greater Power. 

MJ: The Power of Rhythm.

***

SI: Well, I’m Sage Irene… I make solo music sometimes as Friendship City Unlimited, but recently I’ve been in MaryMary! and Future Nest, and then they asked me to join 103 Fever and I kinda just took over it—

Mary and Laura shrug and nod.

SI: It was gonna be, like, disco…?

LC: It was gonna be, like, minimalist techno—

SI: And then I was like: Nahhhh… We’re doin’ country music.

LC: We’re gettin’ our reeds and whackin’ our heels and stuff… And that’s not a joke.

MJ: I’m makin’ horse noises—

SI: It worked well, we all mesh very well. I met Laura a couple months ago but she’s like an old friend to me, we’re very tight like that. I think they all just get the vibe. I met Mary at [a record store] a little while ago…

EH: Yeah, I guess we should backtrack a little bit… I want to talk about 103 Fever’s origin story specifically—

Mary turns to Sage:

MJ: We met at a record store. 

SI: We met on Hinge. 

MJ: No we did not!

Laughter.

MJ: The earnest story is that you were on a date with somebody who I was also seeing at the time, and she brought you to My Place of Work to be like: “Y’all should meet!”

EH: Well… She was lowkey right…. 

A beat. Sage furrows her brows.

SI: Why did she bring me there…?

MJ: I don’t know!!

SI: She also rolled a joint and didn’t let me hit any of it when she said bye to me. Swear to God. 

Laughter.

SI: But then I met Mary and it was cool. 

Mary smiles. I turn to Laura:

LC: Well, [Mary and I] were separated at birth through time and space. We’re twins—

MJ: There is a three year difference between the separation at birth but we’re still twins, which whisked her to Texas and me to Washington State. 

LC: It was rough. It was a weird couple of years that I had to live without my twin, but then we found each other… I was planning to move up to Chicago on January 1st of 2025, but I came to visit in November of 2024 and I thought, “Well, Future Nest is very mobile,” so I brought my stuff and I was gonna play a show. I found out about Mary’s music because I was looking for artists in Chicago and I saw a video of her performing and I thought it was super cool, so I reached out and asked if she wanted to play a show on “this date” at “a venue.” But I needed help booking it because I didn’t know any of the venues in the area, and she was like, “Don’t play this one, play this one, this is the best one, this is my favorite spot,” and she said Cole’s Bar, and I was like, “Cool!” So I started setting it up and she was like, “Hey, actually I can’t play this show, I’m working a wedding that night—”

MJ: A horrible straight wedding—

LC: And I was like, “Ok!” then Mary was like, “Wait, I might not be working this wedding, can you put me on the guest list?” And I was like, “Yeah, absolutely!” And then she didn’t show up.

Laughter.

LC: But it was for the best because everyone got COVID. 

We all go “Oh!”

LC: Mary introduced me to Zoey of Shinespark and Anne of Anne Helen Welles and Avery of AAAYYYAAA—

SI & MJ: Shoutout—

LC: And the show was played with AAAYYYAAA and Shinespark and this band called Drake & The Beatles that was fronted by a friend of mine from Texas named Gren— 

The band name “Drake & The Beatles” makes me snort.

LC: But Mary didn’t come to that show and we didn’t meet, but then I moved up here and we hung out and then we were best friends. We were like: “Oh, that’s who was separated from me at at birth—”

MJ: We found out ‘cuz we both have separate halves of the same locket, and when we put them together it glowed and did, like, a perfect note and then withered away—

Mary and Laura proceed to match each other’s pitch in “Ahhh”’s.

EH: I can’t wait for this scene in the biopic—

LC: I miss that locket. It was a really good outfit piece too, so I’m a little peeved—

MJ: No, me too! It tied every one of my outfits together—

SI: And it exploded?

LC: It did this kinda weird little burst and then it just crumpled up—

SI: And then you took a deep breath in and you sucked in the dust and then both of your voices became the same. And then you swapped bodies…

MJ: That was the crazy thing, we swapped bodies—

LC: We swapped back, it was only for seven hours—

MJ: Yeah, it was only seven hours. We Freaky Friday’d but it was a Tuesday.

SI: “Freaky Friday’d on a Tuesday…” That’s a Brockhampton bar—

Laughter. Mary looks at me:

MJ: We’re very inspired by Brockh—

She stops herself.

LC: You can’t even say it out loud!

EH: I didn’t realize how recent this was! Did you start making music together pretty much immediately? 

LC: It was really funny because Mary and I, when we first hung out, she showed me a song of hers and I was like, “Damn, she’s really good.” It was “Week Goes On and On,” which is technically the first but also the second track off her upcoming record—

MJ: Or, technically second but kinda first—

LC: Kinda first. It’s like squares and circles, one’s the other and the other’s not—

Laughter.

LC: But she said something like, “It’s hard for me to want to work with someone on music immediately because I feel like I have my way that I go about creating, I feel like it usually doesn’t mesh,” which I agreed with too, but then we started working on MaryMary!’s set for Dream Girl together and we found out that we actually click very well… We started hanging out multiple times every week playing music, working on music, coming up with stuff. This was last summer…?

MJ: Laura and I realized really quickly that we make very good music together. And then with Sage, it was the type of thing where when we got to know each other we realized that a lot of our musical philosophies aligned, so I asked her to play a couple shows in the MaryMary! Band, and I feel like the three of us, as a unit, clicked very well. I remember Laura and I were planning 103 Fever as a duo thing, and we were leaving a show and talking and we were like… “What if we just asked Sage to be in the band? And it’s like… ‘We’re a band?” So now we’re a band.

EH: When you say your musical philosophies are aligned, what are your musical philosophies? How did you end up discovering that you had those things in common?

MJ: I think just, like, the joy of creation—

SI: I’m crazy about music. It’s kinda all I talk about—

MJ: All we think about, a little bit—

SI: The first few times I hung out with Mary, all I would do was talk to her about music, which was cool, ‘cuz she works at a record store and I could be like, “Oh, you know this band?” “Can I tell you about this?” I dunno, I just get super excited to talk about music and it’s cool to have friends to talk about it with all the time. 

MJ: I feel like we’re also all of a very similar mindset—

SI: Of the ilk—

MJ: Yes, of a similar ilk. Girls of a similar ilk—

We all laugh.

SI: Girls sipping similar milk—

MJ: Girls of a similar milk—

LC: “Girls sipping similar milk”

SI: Ok, write that down! That’s a good lyric! 

LC: Is anybody writing this down?

EH: I actually did write that down. 

MJ: Y’know, creating for the sake of it—

SI: Just making a bunch of shit all the time—

MJ: Making a bunch of shit all the time and not necessarily being beholden to what gear we have, but working with our limitations and not letting that stop us from making whatever we want to make. Sage in particular is really into tape and lo-fi recording and at-home studio tricks… I feel like you’re one of the best audio engineers I’ve ever met.

LC: Certainly. Without a doubt. 

SI: Thank you, I try! I love tape machines, I love my Tascam 488… I think we just like to have fun. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t fun… I think that’s all people need to know about this band, it’s gonna be a fun time—

MJ: I mean, I don’t know how else you could describe 103 Fever besides, like, alt-country electronic jam band—

LC: I would describe it as interesting… curious music… it’s fascinating—

MJ: A Queer Trio of Frauds.

LC: That’s true, we are frauds. Nothing we’re saying in this interview is true, by the way—

SI: I heard the new Geese record and I said: “I could do better than that.”

Laughter.

Mary hands me an EXCLUSIVE piece of 103 Fever merch that now resides on my fridge: a sticker that says “A QUEER TRIO OF FRAUDS. SOME VERY PECULIAR ABILITIES, 103 FEVER.” She smirks.

MJ: You can keep that.

***

EH: I wrote this down in my notes when I was prepping, but the entire time I’ve known my roommate she’s been saying that before she starts a band she needs to find her “Musical Soulmate,” an almost mystical, otherworldly kind of connection she’s looking for… but it seems like you’ve all actually found that…

LC: It’s kinda like when Noah heard the word of God—

MJ: Why are you getting religious…

SI: I had a good story! Can I tell my good story? I had a sincere moment I would like to share—

MJ: Well, this is one of the best stories—

EH: Famously…

It’s at this moment that I notice Sage’s yellow baseball cap says: “ I ❤ JESUS” and jot down a note about it.

LC: Noah kinda had to take faith into his own hands, and he didn’t know if it was gonna be real or not because he was just hearing voices that told him to build the Ark, y’know? And then built it, and the flood happened, and I bet he felt so good that the flood happened. ‘Cuz he was right! Anyway, what’s your stupid story, Sage?

We all start DYING laughing.

MJ: Ella, I need to know what you just wrote down—

EH: I wrote down: “Sage wearing ‘I Heart Jesus Hat’ parenthesis yellow parenthesis Noah.”

MJ: Well, take note of the second part of what the hat says…

I look at Sage’s hat again and realize that it, in fact, reads: “I ❤ JESUS etc.”

EH: Oh my God. It’s a fucking Wilco hat—

SI: It’s worse! 

LC: Sage, what’s your story?

SI: It was when we played the Burlington in March for Mary’s Birthday Show. We’d just gotten this practice space, we were here a ton and we were starting to sound really good, and that show I felt so confident in—

MJ: We felt very tight and, like, harmonious—

SI: We were so happy and giddy the whole time, and we had so many people come up to us after and be like, “I love seeing bands have fun like that.” Laura is always smiling so hard while we play, and there are so many moments in Mary’s songs where we have to do a crazy big hit all at once and it just blows the speakers out, and it’s so rewarding to look over at both of them and think: “I am so happy to be up here with y’all. I’m so happy I found y’all.” I just moved up to the city from the suburbs too, like, in August. I’ve always wanted to live in Chicago, and being in this music scene is kinda all I’ve ever wanted to do. I had a cousin who was in the music scene when I was growing up and I was so inspired by him; I was just like, “I want to be a part of that so bad.” I was, like, thirteen going to all the local shows and wanting to be so engrossed in it. It took me a couple years, but this is awesome. I actually did it. I have bandmates to go onstage with and play shows at these venues I used to go to as a kid… This is the actual dream. We don’t need anything more than this—I have my best friends, so it’s sweet.

MJ: There are ways for the comment, “You look like you’re having so much fun onstage,” to be treated as a back-handed thing, but I do feel like it’s earnest. Especially in the way people were talking about the last string of shows we’ve played, I think that’s what made the music so Magical and Good, it’s how much fun we’re having with one another and how comfortable we are with each other.

EH: That’s what I’m always so struck by when I see your shows. It is one of those things where you leave and you feel so alive and it’s just so affirming of, like, The Power of Music and Friendship… Which feels cringe when you say it out loud but it’s true. 

SI: We’re gonna kill cringe with this band. It’s gonna be ok to love your friends, everybody’s gonna start hugging their friends goodbye after our shows—

LC: Every friend gets a hug—

SI: You can text your friend “Good Morning…” Tell your friends you love them every day—

LC: In 103 World, we love our friends… 

SI: We’re gonna create a new type of “woke.”

MJ: We’re gonna create a new “woke” that’s all about respecting our friends and lifting them up and where all friends share a bed every night. 

LC: Exactly. It’s all about faith. It’s all about the deliverance of faith… Have you ever heard the story of Noah? 

***

SI: Who is our music for?

I laugh.

EH: That’s a good question, who does 103 Fever make music for?

SI: We came up with the answers—

Sage, Mary, and Laura all rapid-fire:

• Friends
• Lesbians
• Girls Who Don’t Wear Deodorant
• Masochists
• Sadists
• Girls Who Used To Be Horse Girls
• Gamblers
• Healthy Gamblers 
• People Who Buy One Dollar Scratch-Offs
• People Who Buy HUGE Gambling Pools But Take Good Care Of Their Bodies
• Gamblers Who Also Run Every Once in a While
• Gamblers Who Jog and Eat Salads
• Inflation Fetishists
• Sneakerheads
• Hi-Fi Enthusiasts
• People Who Still Make Vine Compilations on YouTube
• People Who Were Really Affected By The Blueberry Scene in Willy Wonka
• Trans Folk-Punk Artists Who Were Once Vine Stars (“I can’t name any but if they’re out there, this is for you”)
• Construction Workers
• People Who Aren’t in Unions
• People Who Are in Unions
• People Who Wear Sandals
• People Who Don’t Wear Sandals
• People With A Little Bit of Sand on Them From The Beach Still
• People Who Have Sand in Their Teeth Still
• People Who Like Sand in Their Meat
• People Who Like Toasting Their Buns
• People Who Like Toasting Their Buns and Sand in Their Teeth

MJ: What was your question?

***

EH: How do you know when a song is for your solo project or when it’s a 103 Fever song? How are those processes different? 

SI: We’ve only ever written songs all together, we’re not allowed to do solo stuff. It’s almost all born out of  jams… or saying something funny to make each other laugh and then just repeating it over and over again—

MJ: And then literally being like: “Wait, that could be a song…” We have a song called “Beat It—”

SI: We wrote that song in, like, 30 seconds—

LC: And the song is only about… 30 seconds…

MJ: I feel like our song, “Like a Horse,” started from [Sage] doing joke rap bars that we were like… Wait… those are actually really good lyrics… And then we spun it into, like, an alt-country song—

LC: We were doing Weezer—

MJ: We were doing Weezer?

LC: It was some Weezer song and we just sang what we thought the lyrics should be—

MJ: We have a tendency to jam for an hour uninterrupted and just kinda jump into other ideas and grooves from one another. We could be rockin’ an idea for ten minutes straight and then immediately someone starts playing something else and we all take a step back and jump into that. And that kinda spins into what become our actual songs.

LC: We’re very good at dynamic listening with each other, which is really helpful. Like, if someone does something different, we’ll all kinda pivot and be like, “Ok, this is where we need to follow at this point.” Which I think is just good jamming in general—like, good musicianship—but we’re all of a similar sensibility in what we’re trying to create… When someone does something different, it’s like, “How can we continue this in a way that expands it from what it is, but also kinda feels in line with ourselves?”

SI: We like to ask: “Is this anything?”

MJ: “Is this anything” is the big thing, yeah—

LC: A lot of times, the answer is NO—

SI: It’s good, we keep ourselves in check! We can make a lotta bullshit—

MJ: One of the rules here is: “Don’t Gas Each Other’s Flops.”

SI: “Don’t gas my flops—”

LC: “Don’t gas my flop…”

MJ: There have been times, point-blank, when I’ve been like, “Ok, what about this?” and the response is, earnestly, “That’s nothing.” And I’m like, “Cool.”

LC: We record almost everything we do, so it’s fun to look back on. 

MJ: We have countless hour long voice-memos—

LC: We’ve only had this place since March—

SI: But we kinda don’t leave it…

LC: My phone is almost completely out of storage now because of all the voice-memos that I’ve taken, like gigabytes and gigabytes worth of voice-memos… and voice-memos don’t take up a lot of storage at all—

SI: The archives will go crazy…

MJ: Also, it’s worth noting that for a lot of these jams, we go into it with fully no intention of it ever being a song we play onstage, but just stuff that we do to make each other laugh, “Hey There Laura” being an example… That won’t make any sense to anyone reading this…

Sage and Laura sing a line from their (currently unreleased) song,“Hey There Laura:”

LC & SI: “Hey there Laura / Whaddaya say?”

MJ: But the voice-memo for “Hey There Laura” is, like, 35 minutes long! And there are ideas present in it that I think could be spun into a song that we’ll play onstage or record sometime.

SI: I like the little magic moments in music where you’re, like “Oh, that fuckin’ hit.” I’m a Song Girl—like, I like albums, but I like to play a song 20 times in a row until I’m satisfied, and usually it’s just to hear a quick one-second part of it, that magic part. In the one recorded song we have, there’s, like, one little millisecond where the bass pokes out from the guitar, and we played it on loop a couple times and we were like: “That’s cool as fuck.”

MJ: Just ear candy—short bursts or very long bursts of ear candy. We’re trying to be a very singles and songs oriented band…That could change down the line, but I feel like for MaryMary! stuff and Future Nest stuff, both of us have been chipping away at our albums for so long. It’s a very fulfilling experience, but it can be frustrating to be working on this one project for months if not years. The idea of 103 Fever being a band that can get together, record, and release a song within a week is very exciting to me. 

EH: How do you decide when a song is done?

MJ: Mmmm… that’s a great question…

SI: We haven’t done that yet—

Laughter. 

SI: It’s a very live band… It’s fun to do 8 minute jams and stuff, but I don’t expect people to listen to 8 minutes of noise-garage-rock recorded… So maybe it’ll be a little different when we finalize something, but—

MJ: I also anticipate that even the songs—the way that we’re gonna be playing them onstage at our show this Monday—at a future show they’re probably going to sound completely different. I’m also sure that down the line we could play a more garage-rock set or an acoustic country set or a more electronic set… The show on Monday is gonna be entirely electronic with some guitar and bass, but I also feel like we’ve got a few shows lined up for this summer—which is a crazy feeling because no one has heard anything—

LC: I think we have, like four shows booked already, total? And we don’t have a single song out and we’ve never played live… We’re nothing so far!

EH: You’re just, like, a cool Instagram flyer, a cool flyer around town—

LC: Sage designed the poster, she’s a genius for that… The voice of God spoke through her for that one. Much like the Biblical Noah.

MJ: Much like the Biblical Noah when he built the Ark—

SI: Much like the burning bush…

MJ: I hate to say it, but I was one of the deniers… I thought it looked great from the jump, but every time I was like, “Should we include a little more information…?” Sage was like—

SI: I was like, “Fuck no, Mary.”

LC & MJ: And you were right for that—

Laughter.

MJ: We’re not even kidding—

SI: No, I’m rude… I’m Rude Fever… Laura’s… Hairy Fever—

LC: I’m Hairy Fever…?

SI: Mary’s Mary Fever.

MJ: Mary Fever? That’s good—

SI: Mary Fever, Hairy Fever, and Rude Fever.

MJ: Or Scary Fever…

SI: And I’d be Scary Fever… If we were the Spice Girls.

LC: Am I hairy…?

SI: You just have, like… cool hair.

***

I check my phone and see that we’ve been talking for nearly an hour.

EH: Alright, this is officially the longest interview I’ve ever done…

SI: Do you think we’ll make it? Do you think we have it?

EH: I think things are boding extremely well. I think you have it… I think I have it… I think I caught a fever… Who has a thermometer…? 

Laughter.

EH: But let’s wrap it up! Plug your shit, shout out some of your favs… “Dope and Inspiring,” if I may…

(That was a cheeky callback to Mary and I’s interview from this past winter…)

MJ: Hell yeah. We’re all releasing singles on May 25th, 103 Fever, Future Nest, and MaryMary! “Small Price to Pay” by Future Nest, “how2b” by MaryMary!, and “Good Advice (new game+)” by 103 Fever. “how2b” is gonna be the lead single off my upcoming album, I Love You I’m Glad I Exist, and it’s about learning how to be. It’s a dance-punk song and I’m releasing a single-edit so it’ll be a shortened version, only five minutes, while the album version’ll be about seven and a half. It’s groovy but you can cry to it.

LC: And Future Nest’s single, “Small Price to Pay,” is—

SI: “Get Your Condoms Ready.” That’s the tagline… It’s sexy, the bass is loud, the bass’ll get you movin’ —

LC: It’s a song about lighting fires at people’s feet and having a very complicated relationship with desire—

Laughter. A beat.

LC: I feel like I didn’t get to say what I wanted to say about “Small Price to Pay…”

EH: Say it! Please!

LC: Ummm… Get your condoms ready.

We all crack up.

SI: The 103 Fever Song, “Good Advice (new game+)—”

LC: What’s it about, Sage?

SI: I dunno… I haven’t really written the lyrics yet…

LC: The song comes out on Monday, by the way—

SI: It’s kinda like…noise, mumble-core, garage rock… It’s cool.

MJ: A short burst of ear candy.

SI: Two great minutes of ear candy. I’d say listen to it about four or five times, then you’ll get it.

LC: Mary, what music is inspiring you right now?

SI: Bassvictim—

MJ: Yes! Bassvictim, straight up. And World Peace DMT! Kreayshawn! D’Angelo! And in the local scene, Anne Helen Wells, Anti-Soul Organization, Celebrity DUI, Shinespark, OTM, Crisis Actress… Those aren’t all of the people who inspire me, but those are the people who are inspiring me in this exact moment.

LC: I echo. Prefab Sprout too—

SI: Shoutout Marcy the Baptist, she’s goated. Shoutout Massachusetts in general—

MJ: I did an interview recently where I had a whole list of local artists I really wanted to shout out, but the two people I ended up shouting out during the interview were Soft Cell and Kendrick Lamar.

SI: They’re really grateful for that, too—

MJ: Had to give ‘em the MaryMary! bump—

Laughter.

***

MJ: Do we have, like, a final message?

SI: Yeah we do… 

They all start giggling.

MJ: In unison…?

Sage and Laura nod.

103 FEVER: CHANGE THE WORLD. MY FINAL MESSAGE.

I stop recording.

Listen to 103 Fever’s debut single, “Good Advice (new game +),” Future Nest’s “Small Price to Pay,” & MaryMary!’s “how2b” (and while you’re at it, presave her album “I Love You I’m Glad I Exist,” which comes out on July 3rd.)