Lucy Dacus

Filtering years of journal entries, countless wry observations and tales of awkward confessional angst into whip-smart indie rock, Lucy Dacus was quickly marked out as a new songwriting talent when she emerged in 2016.

Raised by an adoptive family in rural Norfolk, Virginia - where her mother was a piano teacher and her guitar-playing father had a healthy stack of Paul Simon, David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen records - Dacus started performing as part of vibrant creative community in Richmond in her teens, before studying film at the Virginia Commonwealth University. Dropping out after a year to travel, she later teamed up with guitarist Jacob Blizard who wanted to use her songs for a college music project, and with the help of another old school friend Collin Pastore, they got a day of recording at Starstruck Studios in Nashville where he was interning. It led to them creating debut album 'No Burden' which was full of heart-twanging, self-deprecating lyrics and dreamy, garage-pop riffs and was released by local independent label EggHunt to an excitable buzz. Rolling Stone magazine went on to name her single 'I Don't Wanna Be Funny Anymore' as one of their best songs of the year, and with record labels vying to work with her, she soon signed to Matador and headed out on the road with The Decemberists and Slyvan Esso.

Still only 22, she returned with second album 'Historian' in 2018 and won praise for her open-wound storytelling and barbed sense of humour. She also writes with sincerity and thoughtfulness about such personal topics as watching her grandmother die, an abusive relationship and voyages of self-discovery, and has been compared with the likes of Courtney Barnett, Angel Olsen and Katie Crutchfield.