Presidents Day is coming up on Monday, February 17. Have you ever been more excited?

Blue Cactus sure is worked up into a patriotic lather. Chapel Hill’s own “modern cosmic country” band is celebrating that most mysterious of federal holidays with “Finger on the Button,” a new seven-inch single on Sleepy Cat Records, in which Steph Stewart and Mario Arnez near-rhyme “Creamsicle complexion” with “erections” and threaten to deport the president.

Lest their ambling honky-tonk pop and their yankee-doodle slang leave any doubt as to just which president they mean, they laid it all out in a long press release, excoriating the Trump administration’s dangerous dysfunction and taking strength in country-protest icons like Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and Kacey Musgraves. 

The “Finger on the Button” single has “Quittin’ Again” on the B-side; H.C. McEntire, James Wallace, and other local lights play on the release. One dollar from each record sold goes to North Carolina agricultural nonprofit Transplanting Traditions.

Blue Cactus is taking the message on tour later this month, starting with a February 20 show at Neighborhood Theatre in Charlotte and a February 21 show at The Pinhook in Durham, and then heading south. The band’s second album, Stranger Again, is due out this year.

But you know how it is, Presidents Day Eve can be even more exciting than the big day itself, so why wait? We’ve got the premiere of “Finger on the Button” today, just in time for whatever latest debacle will arrive via the next New York Times app notification, and the rage-grin you might need to get through it. 

Contact arts and culture editor Brian Howe at [email protected]. 

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