Music from Record Store Day co-founder Michael Kurtz’s band Three Hits! 5-Track EP includes 1985 Hib-Tone single.

It’s pretty cool to be label mates with a band like R.E.M. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers’ first single was released on Atlanta’s Hib-Tone Records in 1981. Four years later, a band named Three Hits would also be on that label’s roster with the 7″ single “Pressure Dome” b/w “Numbers,” produced by Don Dixon at Mitch Easter’s Drive-In Studio, just like R.E.M.’s.

Three Hits was started by Michael Kurtz, with his brother, Danny, and two friends, Sheila Valentine and Jim Biddell. They’d rehearse between the bins at Schoolkids Records, eventually touring up and down the East Coast—even sharing the bill with Alex Chilton at CBGB in New York.

28 years after “Pressure Dome” was released, Kurtz co-founded Record Store Day—a yearly feast for music junkies, where references to labels like Hib-Tone are commonplace—as well as being Knighted in France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his work with Record Store Day. It’s only fitting that Three Hits’ clas­sic single should be available for the first time in nearly three decades for Record Store Day 2013.

Now wait, why is it on a 12″ piece of vinyl? Well, in addition to the original singles’ two tracks, there’s a third song from the Dixon sessions, “Picture Window,” plus two tracks produced by Huw Gower (The Records) from their long out-of-print 1989 EP Fire In The House.

In a celebration of independent music, independent labels and independent record stores, Omnivore Recordings is proud to present the Three Hits 12″ EP Pressure Dome for Record Store Day 2013.

12″ EP / Digital Track List:

Side 1:

1. Cage Of Gold
2. Lori (Last Girl On The Beach)

Side 2:

1. Numbers
2. Pressure Dome
3. Picture Window