Lucy Dacus, a singer-songwriter in the indie genre, is releasing a new album on March 28th and her lead single Ankles has me in a chokehold. On January 15th, Lucy released this song, along with Limerance, as previews into her album “Forever is a Feeling” and performed it on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon the same day (and let me tell you, the live performance was just as good as the studio recording). Ankles and Limerance are some of the first songs we’re hearing from Lucy’s solo career since her 2021 album “Home Video” and we’ve all been anticipating her return to making music solo after her band Boygenius with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker went on hiatus back in 2023.
Many other fans and I were so excited for this sneak peek into the new album, with one comment saying “I know a Lucy banger is cooking when it mentions a body part” in reference to her past song Thumbs. The song Ankles itself is about embracing the sensual and intimate side of a relationship. It comments on turning a strong relationship built on communication into something more physical, but just as trusting, where the person will stay to “help me with the crosswords in the morning.” Like many of her past songs, Lucy doesn’t use gendered terms at all in the song, which has made her a staple in LGBT+ community and allows all of her fans, regardless of gender or sexuality, to relate to her music. The music video, which came out with the song’s debut, is a work of art (literally). It paints Lucy as the subject of a Renaissance-style painting who is exploring the real world for the first time after leaving her frame in a museum. She’s followed by the museum’s security guard (played by Havana Rose Liu, who you make recognize from the movie Bottoms) and the fans can’t get enough of the implied sapphic almost enemies-to-lovers storyline. In a just under 4-minute music video, Lucy tells a great story and it leaves all of us on the edge of our seats waiting for more.
So, be sure to mark March 28th on your calendars so you can listen to the new album when it drops! Now I’ll be going back to listening to Ankles on repeat, fighting (and probably losing) the internal battle on whether or not to buy tickets to her tour in the spring.