You may have heard Chicago singer/actor/songwriter Bethany Thomas somewhere… but was it on college rock radio or the classical music station? Was she singing with Robbie Fulks or Syl Johnson? With Tawny Newsome?  The Mekons? Was it in a Gershwin opera? Was she fronting a Lou Reed tribute band? How bout playing Billie Holiday at a midwestern dinner theater? Perhaps it was with the Bloodshot Records via Muscle Shoals project Jon Langford’s Four Lost Souls? Or maybe some drag show you ended up at one night. Yes, it’s all correct.

Today Thomas shares her powerful single “I’m Not Sorry And I’m Not Scared,” which is off her solo debut release BT/She/Her (Bloodshot Records). Of the new album, Thomas offers, “On BT/SHE/HER, I have proclamations and questions- for myself as much as anyone- about moving through the world in this bi-racial, fat, queer, wonderful body.” The scorching opener, “I’m Not Sorry And I’m Not Scared” kinda says it all. “I no longer feel beholden to apologize for my body,” BT expounds. “My color, my size, the places I go or the space I occupy. If there’s a problem- it is surely yours.” She even got the homie, Lindsey Charles (The Cell Phones) to help her shout it out over Packy Lundholm and Patrick Martin’s meticulously contrasting guitar grooves.