Country duo with ties to North Dakota has the No. 1 song on iTunes

HAZEN, N.D. — A country music duo that hails from North Dakota has the No. 1 song on iTunes right now.

Tigirlily, which consists of sisters and Hazen natives Krista and Kendra Slaubaugh, are now based in Nashville. They celebrated the release of their new single, "Somebody Does," on Tuesday, Feb. 23, and posted to social media Wednesday morning announcing that they woke up with the No. 1 iTunes song in America for all genres.

"PLEASE DON'T PINCH US!!!!!! This is one of our wildest dreams come true, so we want to thank you all from the bottom of our hearts," they posted to Twitter.

The sisters told The Forum on Wednesday morning that they released a teaser for the song on social media a few weeks ago and got their biggest response yet for a clip of a forthcoming tune.

"Right away, we were like, 'We need to put this song out into the world,'" Kendra says.

They hoped to crack into some digital charts, and making the Top 20 seemed like an "amazing" goal," she says. That's why Wednesday morning was "better than Christmas" when they saw it reached No. 1 in all genres, not just the iTunes country chart.

"It's overwhelming in the best way possible," Krista says.

Tigirlily has performed and released music since 2013, when the sisters were teenagers, and has built up a following over the years through releasing songs and playing concerts around the country. They relocated to Nashville in 2017, and they now have more than 450,000 followers on TikTok .

Even after moving to Tennessee, the sisters have kept up their ties to North Dakota, including a virtual concert in April 2020 to benefit the Great Plains Food Bank during the coronavirus pandemic .

The sisters kept busy during the pandemic with virtual events, but they've also been able to perform regularly in Nashville, where Kendra says Tigirlily plays a gig each Saturday from 2:30-6:30 p.m.

"It's been really fun to get back into performing," she says.

And more music is on the way from Tigirlily, though it won't be released in an album format. Instead, Kendra says fans can expect to continue hearing new songs that get released one at a time through digital music outlets, including Spotify and iTunes.

"We're kind of taking it single by single right now just because it's such a digital world now," she says, adding they're constantly writing and working on new music.