The music itself is as rangy as the narrative. Where a song like “Limerence,” with its lilting melody and ruminative tone, is almost hypnotic in its beauty, the more upbeat “Best Guess” has Dacus crooning about the uncertainties of a blossoming relationship over jangly guitars and a steady drumbeat.

Another standout, “Bullseye,” features Hozier, whom Dacus met when he performed with Boygenius in Boston in 2023. It’s typical of Dacus to let one project flow into the next: “As soon as I release a record, I start thinking about the next one,” she says. “I don’t want to stop writing and recording for too long—it’s like a muscle I’ve never had to work out because it’s always in use. If I stop for too long, I worry I’ll forget how to do it.”

When it came to the album’s cover, Dacus knew she wanted “a real, handmade piece of art”—a corrective to the deluge of digital imagery filling our feeds. What she landed on was an oil portrait by Will St. John, depicting Dacus, saintlike, with her eyes downturned and heavy gold cloth draped around her shoulders. St. John’s classical style, recalling the Old Masters, “is rooted in an older standard of beauty,” Dacus says, “which fits me more than today’s beauty standards—people have compared my appearance to Venus or a porcelain doll rather than the Instagram face we’re so used to seeing in the media.” (It also represents, she notes, “the first time I put my own face front and center on an album cover”—fitting for such an unflinchingly personal body of work.)