Sara Jean Stevens -- Lovesick

Sara Jean Stevens has seen her share of the world: she's toured worldwide in other singers' backup bands, and even spent part of her twenties in the Black Hills of South Dakota fighting alongside the Lakota for the right to grow hemp. It's a long way from her family's horse farm, and all of those experiences swirl into her four-song EP, Lovesick, which comes out tomorrow, February 14.

As we discussed in our interview with Stevens, she takes her time with her songs, sometimes letting lyrics marinate for decades. That gives her songs a weathered quality: these aren't spontaneous explosions of emotion, but rather a layered view of Stevens as she is now and as she was when she wrote them.

"Thaw" hearkens back to the Black Hills, a foreboding outlaw country epic. "Swamp Angel Road" kicks the EP off with a raucous party, while the title track is a Laurel Canyon-inflected ballad. Stevens' cover of Gene Watsons' "Fourteen Carat Mind" gives the song's dark humor a mournful patina.

Chicagoans can catch the Lovesick release show on 2/14 at Fitzgeralds, which will also feature The Hoyle Brothers, Reilly Downes, Lydia Cash, Kiley Bree, and Christine Melody

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