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Somewhere between busking on New York City streets as a teenager and recording in home studios across the country, indie folk singer-songwriter Ava McCoy has built a world of songs that feel young and full of life yet somehow like they’ve always been there — achingly personal, quietly universal, starkly and unapologetically real.

McCoy, the only member of her Oregon-rooted family to be raised in New York, found her voice in two places: the towering skyline of the city and the sprawling landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, where she spent summers tracing the lines between her familial past and present. She grew up surrounded by musicians, absorbing melodies from the backseat of her parents’ car: the likes of Roy Book Binder, John Prine, and Big Star floating through the speakers. By the time she could speak, she was singing. By 11, she was writing songs, and by 16, she was sharing them onstage. Now 24, she has independently released multiple singles and an album (2022’s Moss on the Ceiling), as well as her 2023 EP Closer to the Bugs on Acrophase Records (Mali Velasquez, Ginger Root, Font).

Her upcoming sophomore album Dragonfly, also with Acrophase, is a coming-of-age record in the truest sense. Written across multiple cities and time zones, it’s a collection of self-examinations, heartbreak reckonings, and snapshots of a young artist learning to trust herself. 

“It’s kinda all over the place, but so am I,” McCoy says. “Dragonfly feels like a patchwork quilt of me post-college. Realizing the dumb decisions I made (maybe don’t get that tattoo in your dorm room), the things I should’ve said, the ways in which I’ve changed. My tendency to self-sabotage. Friendships and relationships that have gone sour. Surviving sexual harassment and assault, and allowing myself to speak about it freely after spending almost a decade being ashamed. Since writing and recording these songs, I’m no longer afraid to say everything on my mind.”

Recorded between Portland, Brooklyn, and Nashville, Dragonfly is also a patchwork of collaborators and homegrown sessions. Josef Kuhn (Samia, Mali Velasquez, Annie DiRusso) produced the bulk of the record in his East Nashville studio, while additional songs were shaped alongside Ben Coleman, Jonah Ward, and quickly, quickly (Graham Jonson). Across the album’s eight tracks, McCoy expands her sonic world without losing the intimate storytelling that has always been at its core. Banjo, mandolin, 80’s-era guitar pedals, synth pads, and lush vocal stacks weave in and out, a reflection of the genre-fluidity she embraces. There are moments of raw folk minimalism and others of cathartic, road-trip-ready indie rock. At every turn, her voice remains steady and clear, as if she’s sitting across from you, letting you in on a secret.

Lead single “Young Girl” is a love letter to her past self, an ode to the childhood wonder that still fuels her music. “Oh, young girl, it’s a big world, your first time at life,” she sings. “You don’t have to have it down now, just keep up the appetite.” It’s a song that understands growing up as a lifelong process, that being a dreamer isn’t something you grow out of.

The title track explores impermanence, both beautiful and painful. Written after a summer spent with someone she loved in her childhood home, the song was sparked by a small moment: a dragonfly found dead in the kitchen. “At that time in my life, I wasn’t eating, and I was the smallest I had ever been,” McCoy recalls. “I went to the doctor weekly out of concern for my well-being, but I was being praised by the person I loved for the drastic changes in my body.” It’s a song about seeing yourself through someone else’s gaze until you don’t recognize who you are, and about reclaiming that gaze for yourself.

Elsewhere on the album, McCoy turns her pen toward the complexities of relationships — romantic, platonic, and everything in between. “Out of Tomorrows” sits with the echoes of a fading love, the way memories linger long after a person is gone. “More Than a Friend,” the album’s jangly, driving anthem, is McCoy reclaiming her autonomy after a year of feeling discarded. “I hear this song as an Alanis Morissette-esque power anthem,” she says. “It makes me wanna go on a long road trip with friends and roll all the windows down.”

In “Be The Man,” McCoy reflects on the reality of existing as a woman in the music industry, where ease and opportunity are often dictated by gender. “There is a sense of fluidity and freedom that I feel from men that I have made music with, and a lot of that has to do with the industry catering to their needs,” she explains. “Be The Man” resists the pressure to conform to arbitrary and unnecessary standards, choosing instead to celebrate softness, femininity, and imperfection.

Through every song on Dragonfly, McCoy unpacks the ways we shape ourselves in response to others, and how we can learn to reclaim that power. The album is filled with questions, but it never demands a neat answer. It makes space for self-doubt, for curiosity, for the slow, uneven work of growing into yourself.

“The songs are fragile, imperfect,” she says, reflecting on the album’s visual motif of Delft tiles created by ceramicist and print-maker Amelia McDonnell. Illustrated with delicate drawings inspired by moments from the record, these tiles are tangible renderings of the patchwork nature at the heart of these songs. “Each of them has its own feeling and details, but ultimately, they fit together into one beautiful, sometimes flawed picture.”

McCoy’s music lives in a space between nostalgia and discovery. It looks back while still moving forward, finding clarity in the haze of memory. Dragonfly is a testament to what it means to keep searching, to keep asking questions, and to keep singing even when you don’t have the answers yet.

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press: jake@luckybirdmedia.com