Richmond, VA · indie rock · singer-songwriter

Lucy Dacus

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A novelist's eye for the specific detail, delivered in the warmest voice in the boygenius orbit — 'Night Shift' still the slow-burn masterclass.

Lucy Dacus was born in 1995 and grew up in Mechanicsville, a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, after being adopted as an infant; she is of Uzbek and Irish descent. Her adoptive mother is a professional pianist and music teacher, her father a graphic designer, and she bought her first guitar, a Craigslist find, while still in middle school.

Before making music full time, Dacus studied film at Virginia Commonwealth University and worked at a Richmond photo lab editing children's school pictures. During that period she wrote around thirty songs, nine of which became her debut album, No Burden, recorded in Nashville with Collin Pastore and Jacob Blizard and released locally on EggHunt Records before Matador Records signed her and reissued it in 2016.

The follow-up, Historian, and the more autobiographical Home Video established her as one of the more detail-oriented writers in American indie rock. Her songs tend toward the narrative, drawing on memory, adolescence and religious upbringing, delivered in a low, unhurried voice over guitar arrangements that build slowly.

She is also a member of boygenius alongside Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers, a trio that released two EPs and the album The Record. The band won three Grammy Awards in 2024, including Best Alternative Music Album, and became the first all-female band to win Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance.

In October 2023, Rolling Stone named Dacus the 213th-greatest guitarist of all time. Her fourth solo album, Forever Is a Feeling, followed in 2025.

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indie rocksinger-songwriter