“This song is dedicated to lesbians,” Lucy Dacus said when she debuted Best Guess back in October at Boygenius bandmate Julien Baker’s show. And the lesbians and bisexuals thank her for her services to music videos.
Dacus has been blessing queer women everywhere with her new self-directed music videos. First there was January’s Ankles, which featured a sapphic romance between an escapee princess from a portrait and a harangued security guard, played by Havana Rose Liu (the hot popular girl in Bottoms) in a sharp suit.
Now we have Best Guess, starring Cara Delevingne in a shirt and suspenders and a slicked back bun, insouciantly chewing on a toothpick and sitting down to a game of poker.
Dacus, who is one third of indie pop group Boygenius, directs and stars in the video with a concept best described as: wow, look at all these hot mascs! She gazes admiringly as butch lesbians and trans men in wife-beaters or suits arm wrestle, box, gamble, and do press ups.
Best Guess is practically a who’s who – and who has dated who – of alt queer arty It girls, gays and theys. Alongside Delavigne (who notably dated St Vincent, before the latter announced her secret wife and child at the Grammys) it also stars the singer and Muna band member Naomi McPherson, the non-binary actor ER Fightmaster, and Towa Bird – the singer and guitar player currently dating fellow musician Renee Rap.
Dacus also cast friends and fans she found online in the music video. The artist has also been putting her money behind important queer causes, pledging $10,000 for trans people raising cash for surgery on GoFundMe in response to Donald Trump’s attacks on trans rights in the US.
While it’s a bad time for LGBTQ+ rights both sides of the Atlantic (looking at you, Wes Streeting), at least we’re in a golden age of out and proud queer women making art. Artists such as Chappell Roan, Doechii, Billy Eilish, Dacus and St Vincent all openly date women and are booking huge venues – something that would not have been a given even a decade ago.
Dacus’s new album, Forever is a Feeling, is out on 28 March, and Dacus has just announced a UK tour that will be stopping at London’s O2 Brixton Academy on 26 June. Tickets go on sale on Friday 21 February – see you in the queue, girl kissers.
