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Is it okay if I knit while we are doing this?

I know that makes me seem a thousand years old.

Lucy Dacus is not a thousand years old.

In fact, she is barely 22.

It is then that I remember Dacuss age.

I dont need to be the front man.

Theres no nuance to it, honestly.

People ask me, what is it about?

And Im like, um, I could just read you the lyrics?

I think people feel a social pressure to be funny, especially as a coveted role in social groups.

Its like, if you are making them laugh then you dont have to be beautiful or a bitch.

I think you should get a break from your box, even if you like your box.

No Burden,Dacuss first LP, came out in February 2016 on the small Virginia-based label EggHunt.

It was like, an equal activity to playingMario Kart, she says.

In high school, it became more of a solitary pattern.

In Dacuss songs, there is our kind, and then there is everyone else.

Dacus always writes lyrics before melodies, and has been keeping a diary as long as she can remember.

I was adopted, and so was my mom, she says.

And so I just was in tune with how life can be intentional.

Why do Americans believe that is a good option?

I started to think maybe I had fallen for a ruse.

I loved it, because it was mindless and I just listened to music all day long.

Especially bands that have sustainably put out good work.

They seem to avoid trendiness.

To prepare, she read long books Anna Karenina, Don Quixote,and Karl Ove KnausgaardsMy Struggleseries.

she says of Knausgaards work, scrunching up her nose.

I read so many women and I am usually so pissed at male writers for not showing depth.

Thats my main complaint with Murakami, that he writes these complex males, and then really static women.

Maybe that seems really dramatic.

But its all real and worth saying.

I just dont want him to define me.

The first time I tasted somebody elses spit, I had a coughing fit, Dacus sings.

The color is M.A.Cs Ruby Woo, and she calls it her uniform.

Because I have to be calm.

I have to, like, be still for a second.

I have to find a mirror, I have to be attentive.

I wrote that song next to her deathbed, she says.

I learned a lot from her in that time, and so it is triumphant, kind of victorious.

Im weak looking at you, a pillar of truth, turning to dust.

Lucy Dacus is not a thousand years old, but she seems to have her eyes on the hourglass.