Alternative singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus talks devotion to not just the craft, but to the deeper questions of connection, meaning and creating in an ever-complicated world.

One of music’s most thoughtful and unflinchingly honest voices, Lucy Dacus has built her reputation on the power of her pen and the thoughtfulness of her viewpoint. Releasing perhaps her best project yet this March, Forever Is A Feeling balanced that sharp detail with sweeping emotional resonance, creating a body of work so deeply personal yet profoundly universal.

 

Since her 2016 debut No Burden, the Richmond-born singer-songwriter has carved out her own space in the world of alternative music, writing songs that grapple with identity, memory, faith, and the shifting weight of intimacy. Her voice – warm, unhurried and edged with quiet conviction – carries lyrics that feel both diaristic and timeless, as if they belong to anyone willing to listen closely. Beyond her solo work, she’s also one third of the supergroup Boygenius alongside Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, a collaboration that has not only expanded her audience but also sharpened her sense of community and shared storytelling.

 

On Forever Is A Feeling, her fourth solo record, Lucy turns her gaze toward love in all its fleeting, disorienting and intoxicating forms. Produced with Blake Mills, the album is both an exploration of romance’s complexities and, for fans, an almost fan-fiction-worthy glimpse into her real life, released just weeks after she made her relationship with bandmate Julien public. Songs like the intimate ‘Ankles’ and the wistful ‘For Keeps’ unravel desire’s paradox: the simultaneous hunger for closeness and the ache of distance. Elsewhere, the quiet road-trip meditation of the shoegazey ‘Talk’, the climactic yearning of ‘Big Deal’ and the romantic realism of ‘Best Guess’ capture the ways relationships shift and reshape over time. A personal favourite, ‘Limerence,’ exemplifies her incredibly gentle yet pointed lyrical prowess with an almost stream-of-consciousness painful tale of falling out of love. Vulnerable, playful and at times boldly sensual, the album finds Lucy confronting the universal truth she arrived at while writing: that love, in its many forms, and indeed loss, are at the centre of what makes life meaningful.

Through it all, Lucy Dacus has resisted the lure of artifice. Whether she’s addressing coming-of-age, queerness or the sociopolitical urgencies of the moment, her work invites listeners into a space of radical sincerity. She’s the kind of artist who can confront mortality with a level gaze and, in the same breath, revel in the sweetness of a fleeting moment. It’s this duality – weighty but never heavy-handed – that has made her work so enduring.

 

Onstage, she has found new ways to turn concerts into spaces of connection and celebration. From the catharsis of hearing crowds sing back her words to the intimacy of officiating marriages mid-set, her shows collapse the distance between artist and audience, transforming performance into communal ritual. For Lucy, that sense of togetherness is not just incidental to music; it’s essential, a counterweight to the isolating forces of modern life.

 

Creatively, she remains restlessly curious. This record marked a shift in her songwriting, capturing feelings as they unfolded rather than in hindsight. The result is work that feels immediate and urgent, anchored by the awareness that time is fleeting. In our conversation, she speaks candidly about experimenting with process, from the discipline of jotting down fragments in yearly phone notes to the temptation of stripping words away altogether in pursuit of pure sound.

 

Yet Lucy Dacus’ inspirations extend far beyond the studio. Museums, literature and even the simple joy of cooking have all become new outlets for creative exploration. These detours reveal an artist who is not just documenting her inner world but continually reshaping it, finding fresh ways to stay connected to beauty, meaning and the ordinary pleasures of daily life. For our latest digital cover, Lucy reflects on the themes that continue to shape her music and her life: the exhilaration and authenticity of live performance, the urgency of writing through experience in real time, and the way constraints – or the lack of them – change the creative process. She talks about exploring inspiration beyond music, whether in the intimacy of cooking or the stillness of museums, and about the discipline of capturing fragments of life in her ever-growing collection of notes.Â