Lucy

Cape Cod, a Facebook page, a borrowed name

Cooper B. Handy was born on 10 February 1994 on Cape Cod, a strip of Massachusetts with beaches, tourists and almost no music infrastructure. In 2007, aged thirteen, he met Salvadore McNamara through MySpace and the two of them started playing in New England's DIY circuit as Taxidermists. Two years later, still at school, Handy set up a Facebook page called "lucy" and used it as an anonymous outlet. The alias outlasted the anonymity and became the name on the records.

After finishing school he moved west, to the Amherst and Northampton end of the state, and has stayed there since — twelve years by the time The Fader profiled him in December 2024. From 2010 he was releasing with childhood friends through Dark World, the independent label built around the rapper DJ Lucas, and that collective gave him a scene to answer to. In 2013 he formed Club Casualties with Nick Atkinson, who records as Ghost, an electronic pop duo whose debut single arrived in 2015 and whose second album followed in the autumn of 2023.

A discography built on dishwashing shifts

The LUCY catalogue proper starts in 2014, while Handy was washing dishes and running catering for Amherst College. The method has barely changed since: write it, record it in GarageBand, put it out. Between 2015 and 2021 he numbered the results — Cooper B. Handy's Album, Vol. I through Vol. VIII — alongside five EPs and a steady run of singles, plus releases through Dots Per Inch, Surf Gang Records and Nude Club. The volume is the point. Material goes up unpolished and close to real time, which is why the shape of his back catalogue looks less like a release schedule and more like a diary.

The one exception sits awkwardly. The Music Industry Is Poisonous, released in 2021, had outside backing, and it is the record he looks back on with regret. Speaking to Pigeons & Planes in October 2026 he put the problem down to the sound rather than the deal: "I was just confused about the production with that one."

Cooper B. Handy's Album, Vol. 9 landed in December 2024 and ran to seventeen songs, the longest thing he had made. It leaned on piano and on samples, including flips of Guns N' Roses and Céline Dion, and closed with "Barking", a song about memory and the place he grew up. Its central line — "Everyone I ever met lives inside of me" — was something he had written down at sixteen and carried for a decade before it found a home.

The King Krule slot and the years after it

The audience arrived in 2023, when Handy opened a run of King Krule's Space Heavy dates in the United States. The Atlanta show did the work: footage circulated on TikTok precisely because the room could not agree on what it was watching. What followed was a stretch of collaboration that cut across scenes rather than settling into one. He cut "Even the Score" with the Swedish producer Whitearmor in 2022, made JACK & THE BEANSTALK with Evilgiane and the Surf Gang producers in June 2024, released 100% Prod I.V. with I.V. the same year, and worked with RXKNephew. Clairo and Charli XCX both got in touch.

The darkwave end came through Boy Harsher: the album Cutting the Stone in 2024, the Safe Mind project with the duo's Gus Muller and its single "6' Pole", and a set at Primavera Los Angeles. Somewhere in that period the day job went. By the autumn of 2026 he had been off the Amherst dining payroll for around two years, with the money tighter than the schedule and the writing routine unchanged.

CITIZEN'S ARREST

The new album was announced on 19 August 2026 with the single "COURTSIDE" and released on 9 October. Eighteen tracks, running from "NO QUITTER" and "BEFORE I WAS SURE" through "FANCY CHANDELIER" and "HOLES IN MY HEAD" to "CHECK ON ANYBODY" and "PROTECTED BY LOSS", with Maria Manow of Bassvictim guesting on "100 MILES". It is also the first LUCY album with label distribution behind it, and the first in years not to carry a volume number — he was talked out of calling it Vol. 10 on the grounds that newcomers would file it as a late-career mixtape rather than a record.

Handy describes it as his "folk art album", and the title is doing philosophical work about authority and held attention rather than scoring a point. The making of it was as solitary as everything before: a small studio, GarageBand, sessions that start after sunset. Professional rooms do not suit him — he recalls a New York session that produced no usable vocal at all. "When there's someone between my voice and where the recording ends up, it's hard for me to get fully loose with it." Ideas get caught outdoors, hiking or on a bike, as voice memos of melodies and freestyles. The quality test is physical: "If the words make sense, and if I'm in the studio and find myself physically moving while I'm listening to a mix, that's a good sign."

He is also firm that the strangeness is not a gag. Asked about the comic reading of his work, he answered: "It's not really like that at all. I'm serious — none of it really feels funny to me." Reviewers have taken the record on those terms. Stereogum heard "COURTSIDE" as something like Yung Lean and Ty Segall sharing a studio — a bass-heavy hip-hop beat, thin echoing vocals, a drum part that trips over itself, and the sound of crockery breaking. The Line of Best Fit placed the album between southern rap, lo-fi rock and electronic pop. Pigeons & Planes read it as a mid-career high point that balances recognisable LUCY songs against more live instrumentation and more deliberate construction, and works as a starting point for anyone who has not heard him before.

Out on the road until December

The touring behind the record is a long, unglamorous North American circuit booked by Ground Control Touring. It opened on 21 October 2026 at Songbyrd in Washington DC and runs to 6 December at The Rockwell in Somerville, just outside Boston, with 27 dates listed in between. Almost all of them are small rooms: Aisle 5 in Atlanta on 23 October, Rubber Gloves in Denton, White Oak Music Hall's upstairs space in Houston, Hotel Vegas in Austin, Valley Bar in Phoenix, Milky's in Los Angeles on 30 October, Soda Bar in San Diego on Hallowe'en, Kilowatt in San Francisco, the Holland Project in Reno, Mississippi Studios in Portland, Barboza in Seattle, The American in Vancouver, Neurolux in Boise, Kilby Court in Salt Lake City, Lost Lake in Denver, Reverb Lounge in Omaha, 7th St. Entry in Minneapolis, Cactus Club in Milwaukee, Schubas in Chicago, the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights, Dance Cave in Toronto, Cabaret Foufounes in Montreal, Tubby's in Kingston, Johnny Brenda's in Philadelphia, Good Room in Brooklyn and AS220 in Providence.

The bill changes city to city rather than travelling as a package. Nation is listed as support on three of the dates and Negashi Armada on one. Beyond the North American run, a London date at the Leytonstone Social Club is listed for 20 January 2027.