Sister. is a Brooklyn-based band that started out as the duo of Hannah Pruzinsky (aka h. pruz) and Ceci Sturman, who met as college roommates at St. John’s University in Queens. After Sturman wrote a song for a course assignment and naturally asked Hannah to sing it, the pair started playing shows together and were repeatedly asked if they were siblings, hence the name. Guitarist and producer James Chrisman joined the group in 2020, and they released a couple of EPs before their debut LP, Abundance, arrived in 2023. A uniquely tender collection of songs revolving around friendship, the record featured Felix Walworth (also of Told Slant and Florist), who plays a more prominent role on its follow-up, contributing drums, synth, and additional production. Out Friday, Two Birds is both a culmination of a decade of friendship and a document of its changing shape; Pruzinsky and Sturman stopped being roommates, a transition that cuts through the fuzzy catharsis of the title track. Conflicting yet strangely mutual feelings sit at the heart of the album, or like a knot in the throat, untangling itself through shared memories, vulnerabilities, refrains – and an awareness, both musical and lyrical, that reaches beyond the two, three, or four people in a room. “Weren’t you moving towards eternity?” goes the last line on ‘Honey’, which sounds like a relief. If something’s always changing, doesn’t that mean we get to hear its echo into infinity?
We caught up with Sister. for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about the openness of their music, the making of Two Birds, uncategorizable relationships, and more.
Hannah, you mentioned in our conversation last year that putting out music as h. Pruz felt anonymous and hidden at first. I’m curious if that’s a feeling you and Ceci shared when you started releasing music on Bandcamp.
Hannah Pruzinsky: Personally, I think it felt a lot more intimate when we were releasing Sister. songs that were openly about our friendship and relationship and journeying into being songwriters. That has always felt really special to me, to be so open and vulnerable about it because I think that is the crux of a lot of our relationship, between Ceci and I and between the three of us. Just this vulnerability with songwriting, with playing together, and I think we like sharing that with the listener too.
Ceci Sturman: I definitely agree. Something about Sister. that is really awesome for me, and also really challenging, is the fact that it doesn’t feel very anonymous. When I write, I really lean on a lot of ambiguity and anonymity, and for Sister., I feel like we didn’t ever really try to do that so much. It’s pretty much like, “This is for you to take away about our relationship.” Especially with this album in particular, I think we actualized a lot of the messaging in a new way that I really appreciate.
James, what was it like for you to enter into that vulnerability, first as an observer and then as a collaborator as you were carving out your role in the group?
James Chrisman: I think you guys had put out two singles when I met you. A friend of mine brought me to their show, and I had heard one of the songs before and really liked it. I remember just being really struck by the lyric-writing, these unique phrases. So much of songwriting is just really cliche ideas set to chords, and every stanza felt bespoke and strange and that was very exciting to me. I think I just talked to them after the show and was like, “If you need a guitar player ever, let me know.” The pandemic happened, so it ended up being a situation where they were sending me files, and we recorded our first EP like that, so that set a template for doing a little more than guitar playing in the group. It’s like having a really strong specific idea with the point of view presented and then being like, how do we package that to either complicate it or reinforce it? It’s not problem-solving exactly, but for me Sister. isn’t about self expression. It’s like, how do I help that expression, which I think is very different about our experiences of being in this band. I’m a fiction writer; I express myself plenty, so I don’t really look at this as that outlet. The thrill of it is presenting someone else’s idea.
One phrase that stuck out to me is “the end of the abundance” on the song ‘Power’. Is that meta reference?
CS: The song ‘Power’ is so much about wanting to personify someone really struggling to understand and grasp their own control of things. Maybe that’s sort of a reference to us as a band and how much control we have over what comes of our music and what is put into it based on what we all have to offer. I think we wanted to put in a little cheeky reference to Abundance.
‘Blood and the Vines’ completely makes sense as the introduction to the record. While it’s written in the present tense, it’s one that looks back on a past that maybe feels more distant than other songs in the album. Did the collaborative nature of the songwriting bring out a fresh perspective to it?
JC: That was one that we wrote the three of us. I’m not there for when Hannah and Ceci write alone, and I think when I’m there, I tend to want more speed. Hannah and Ceci tend to take more time, and I think part of that leads to more imagistic writing and narrative specifics rather than abstract phrases describing particular situations. I think some of that experience in that song, the literal present tense and the actuality of water hitting the ground comes from that – it’s much easier in a moment to think of an image than it is an abstract combination of nouns.
CS: It’s true. In that 30-minute exercise of writing ‘Blood in the Binds’, there just wasn’t as much time to fight about it or try to figure out a better phrase. We don’t even really necessarily talk about this so much, but I think so much of that song is really reminiscent of our relationship and our growing up together, me and Hannah. We were living together for nine years since our freshman year of college, and it was easy to just go back to that place.
HP: I didn’t even realize how reminiscent it was of our own experience until many months later of playing it so much.
CS: It’s funny because I imagine to a listener, it’s probably maybe obvious or something. If we’re being like, “This album is about us,” and then we’re like, “Oh, wait, this song is about us too.” [laughs] But sometimes you can only write about the same thing forever, and then you don’t even realize you’re still writing about it.
JC: If the two of you are writing, the well you’re drawing from is shared reference, and the shared reference you guys have is your life together, so it makes sense that these images that come from your life end up being what your subconscious is throwing forward. We were talking about a lot of the songs in the record being sort of alternate possibilities for what two people relating to each other this way – how that could look in different scenarios, like if it wasn’t tended to or if it was overly tended to. Different songs are like refractions, not just of the actual relationship but possibilities within that relationship. ‘Blood in the Vines’ is definitely that.
I like how you throw that joke in: “Leave room for Jesus.”
JC: I remember when Hannah said that during the writing exercise, and we laughed so hard. I remember just being so thrilled, it was the funniest thing. Which is also part of what’s fun about group writing. You wouldn’t necessarily have written that line unless we were in that environment.
HP: I grew up in Catholic school, so that was a common phrase. Feels cheeky to add.
JC: And we all grew up in pretty Christian environments, regardless of what our current relationships are to that, and I think there’s just a fun humor for all of us acknowledging that that’s where we came from, and those are the kind of phrases we heard.
CS: And it’s true to our relationship as well – a lot of religious and spiritual exploration.
There is that through line on Two Birds of processing your relationship, especially in the context of living apart for the first time in almost a decade. How did you go about weighing in what was coming out in conversation or through songwriting?
HP: I feel like the theme of most of our conversations at that time, at least from my perspective, was a lot of fear about growing apart. I think we both shared that, and it was a really sad time because this was our normal. Living together seemed to somehow in our brains solidify the emotional relationship in a way. But I think the songwriting then was a way to distill some hope from that fear; it felt like a reassurance over time and a way to come through it with hope. I think ‘Two Birds’ is a really good example of that. We were so upset when we wrote that song together. But that chorus feels like a refrain we can hold on to in our experiences moving forward.
CS: Honestly, some of the only reassurance I could literally feel was when we were able to create together and continue to do something that we love to share together. The conversations we were having at that point – I can just think of my own experience, and I felt like I was just coming to you with fear and being like, “I’m scared. I miss you. I’m worried.” And there’s only so much we could say to each other. Like, “No, it’s okay. Nothing’s gonna happen. Don’t worry. I love you.” But that isn’t the same as the feeling of writing a song, resolving something. That’s a feeling I don’t experience anywhere else in my life, because it just feels artistic and complete. The songwriting process felt better than the conversations we were having, I think.
JC: People say the function of comedy is for us to linger in taboo. It’s kind of a cliche thing to say about stand-up comedians now, but they’re able to say things that you would not say in normal society. And I feel like a lot of art operates that way too: it lets us linger in this place. I wonder if a song like ‘Piece of Silver’, which is not what your guys’ relationship is like, but there is a kind of negativity to the lyrics that’s letting you guys go further outside what you would want to acknowledge – fear, maybe. Does that resonate with you guys at all?
HP: Yeah. We were exploring someone else’s fallen relationship in that song, and I think that is kind of a worst case scenario situation of what could have happened in our own relationship.
CS: Yeah. I remember writing ‘Piece of Silver’ at a time where it felt like I was feeling particularly scared and leaning into the drama of it and going to that place. It’s not something we would be doing in our conversations, so it was cool to have that outlet.
I want to get to ‘Piece of Silver’, too, but I feel like ‘Two Birds’ in many ways is at the heart of the album, and it’s interesting that it’s also in the middle of it. Is there a specific way that you imagine the trajectory of the album?
CS: That’s such a good question. We thought a lot about sequencing, and to me, if we opened or closed with ‘Two Birds’, it would have been too on the nose or something. There is something powerful about putting it in the middle, as the weighted down point.
HP: I agree with you, and I think sonically, it made a lot of sense to be a release somewhere in the middle. I also like that it’s close to ‘Two Moons’ and the play between those two ideas.
CS: The relationship between those two songs feels so important to me.
JC: There’s also a grammar to album sequencing, and it just generally makes sense to have anthemic songs closer to the middle.
On ‘Piece of Silver’, James’ baritone voice adds to the ghostliness that is alluded to in the lyrics, and then you get this explosion of guitars that feels unique in the context of the band. Was it a challenging song?
JC: I don’t remember it being easy.
CS: It took us a while to figure out.
JC: There’s a drum and guitar thing we did live, and then there’s a whole second drum kit overdubbed over it that comes in at the bridge. I think we were all pretty drunk at that point, and Felix is going crazy, playing so loud, which they don’t normally do. [laughs]And then we had Felix play some feedback guitar on that, I think I did some feedback guitar too. That might be the only guitar Felix plays in the record, just those big notes. There’s versions of that song that have that bridge without being as extreme as it is, but it’s what we did.
HP: Screaming…
JC: Yeah, we left the room so they could scream together.
CS: The song is about a worst case scenario, maybe of our relationship, and it was really natural to lean into making a crazy bridge. That felt like a lot of the silver metaphor of the metal screeching together and really breaking apart. When I think of the bridge, I think of metal scraping against each other and fire flying out of it, which felt important to do and then completely cut, so that it almost feels like it was a dream or an intrusive thought.
JC: In some ways, the rest of the song is the most traditionally beautiful music on the record, but the lyrics are about this abyss of despair under you that you don’t want to acknowledge. So you acknowledge that for fifteen seconds, and then you go back to trying not to.
Felix got to play on Abundance, but I was wondering what it was like for you to have them be involved from start to finish on this record.
CS: Felix has just an amazing brain, and I think there’s a sort of easy answer, which is just adding a fourth person that thinks about how to make things beautiful and interesting and has incredible experience doing so much of that will naturally make what we’re making better. We all love each other very much, and there’s so much chemistry that, obviously Hannah and Felix have, but we also have with Felix, and we love playing with them. I think that they also get to be a huge observer in our relationship. In many ways, it’s interesting to think about – they are really involved in why we stopped living together, and it’s also really beautiful that they get to be on the record too. It’s not something that isn’t met with so much love, but it’s interesting that they get to have a voice in what it was like as well.
JC: I never thought about that.
HP: Yeah, I never thought about that either. They are not a dividing force in the band or in our life, but very unifying. On a different note, Felix has very different opinions than a lot of us usually have in the band, so they would bring a different way of solving problems to the table that sometimes we would do, sometimes we wouldn’t. But they were a big influence behind us playing a lot of it together.
JC: There’s a way that a lot of records are made now, which is you play into the laptop with a click, and then you figure out what the drums are gonna be later. That’s how we did Abundance, which Felix did an amazing job with, but there’s less of their brain in that. And when you actually have to figure out a song in the room and make it breathe, that just works a lot better on the record as far as things feeling intertwined, particularly if they’re performed together. We also had the benefit of Felix’s incredible arrangement mind. A lot of these songs just truly would not be what they are if Felix hadn’t been there.
In the announcement of the album, you mentioned how you’re kind of always talking about relationships.. If you’re comfortable sharing, is there a theme that’s been coming up or that’s been in your minds recently?
HP: Right now, Ceci and I are working on different sorts of collaboration together, with GUNK specifically, the zine that we make. I feel like that is such an important way that we have grown together, and our relationship in the context of a bigger community is very relevant right now for me. Also, now we’re actually living the furthest apart that we ever have – the entirety of when we were making this record we lived down the street from each other.
JC: Now it’s two miles.
HP: [laughs] Now it’s two miles. So, different types of intentionality and spending time together.
CS: Yeah. I don’t know if I ever really experienced any new feelings. I think I just maybe deepen the same feelings and feel them in different ways, but I feel really lucky that we get to share this. It feels really special, and I feel like sharing art and creating with people is one of the greatest gifts that we get to have. It changes shape in many ways. James just wrote a novel, another one, and I had the experience of being able to read it and feeling like I got to know him a lot better even then I already knew him. That was really cool. Also, James and I are doing guitar lessons now for the first time in five years of knowing each other. You always get to do stuff like that. You can always just choose to figure out a different way to not only explore art for yourself, but explore a relationship with someone. And yeah, Hannah and I doing GUNK together is totally this other way that we’re like, “Let’s hold on to another project together.” We’ve gotten to learn so much about each other through that, too.
There’s a line on the final song, ‘Star’, about searching “for regular emotion.” In the context of Two Birds, and in bringing the album full circle, it strikes me as a reminder that there’s hardly any regular emotions when it comes to intimate relationships. I feel like that ineffable quality is part of what Sister. is striving to articulate. Is that something that resonates with you?
HP: We were just on a tour and talking about a relationship – maybe not so much an emotion that’s not regular, but relationships that aren’t regular and can’t be put into words.
JC: What I was saying then was that a lot of good, fulfilling relationships, almost all of them are ones that are not describable in a single category. The bleed between categories is the thing we’re referring to. This feeling between Hannah and Ceci where it’s like, friend isn’t the word for that. It’s much more than friend, but that is the thing. Love or whatever – it’s this feeling of, “This category isn’t enough.” In the same way, those aren’t my bandmates – that wouldn’t be the right word for that. And in some ways that’s the actual endorsement for the thing, that the word isn’t enough.
CS: It really is more the feeling that’s so much more comfortable to attach on to than the descriptor of it, which can often feel like it falls short.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Sister.’s Two Birds is out July 11 via Mtn Laurel Recording Co.
