Lucy Dacus began performing “Thumbs” live in fall of 2018, when she was on tour with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker as boygenius. The intense, emotional song became a fan favorite, inspiring its own Twitter account devoted to “getting Lucy Dacus to release the absolute banger of a song ‘Thumbs.'” Last month, Lucy began teasing the song’s release, with fans receiving VHS tapes featuring a recording of it.

Now Lucy has officially released “Thumbs,” and you can stream it below. She says she wrote it over a 15-minute car ride to dinner in Nashville, TN. “Like most songs I write, I wasn’t expecting it and it made me feel weird, almost sick,” she says. “It tells the story of a day I had with a friend during our freshman year of college, a significant day, but not one that I had thought of for years. I started playing it live a month or so later during the boygenius tour after Phoebe and Julien encouraged me to. I knew I wanted a long time to get used to playing it since it made me feel shaky, so I ended sets with it for about half the shows I played in 2019. Before I played it, I would ask the audience to please not record it, a request that seems to have been respected, which I’m grateful for.”