Purr is the project of New York City born and raised songwriters Jack Staffen and Eliza Callahan.

The duo previously captured attention and earned a name for themselves during their college days for releasing stripped down, warm-toned pop simply under their names, Jack and Eliza. After releasing only one song as Purr, they spent much of 2019 supporting acts from Weyes Blood to Maggie Rogers. Their first album as Purr, LIKE NEW (via ANTI-, produced by Jonathan Rado) was released in late February 2020. Weeks prior to the album’s release and the onset of the pandemic, Callahan experienced a sudden loss of hearing and was subsequently diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disease that can cause deafness within a span of a year. This seemed like a forced sunset for the project and for Callahan’s career in music.

Callahan worked to keep writing (and even listening) as long as was feasible for her but as the pandemic raged on and her condition worsened, music felt like too much of a live wire, and both she and Staffen completely stepped away from Purr. A year later, in 2021, Brent Faiyaz, a fan of the project, reached out to the then-inactive band and sampled nearly their entire song, Hard To Realize, in his track Circles as part of a 3 track viral mixtape co produced by Tyler the Creator. Around this time Callahan entered a small non-FDA approved trial for treatment for her condition and eight months later entered an unlikely remission which led to her recovery.

Staffen and Eliza began writing again and it was in a span of only eight months that they completed what would become their next album. In Spring 2022, they went to Los Angeles to record their forthcoming album with their previous collaborator, Jonathan Rado.