Hand Habits - Placeholder Vinyl Record

Meg Duffy grew up in a small town in Upstate New York and cut her teeth as a session guitarist and touring member of Kevin Morby's band. The Hand Habits project emerged after Meg moved to Los Angeles; it started as a private songwriting outlet but soon evolved into a fully-fledged band with Meg at the helm. Hand Habits' debut album, Wildly Idle was entirely self-produced and recorded in Meg's home during spare moments when they weren't touring. Wildly Idle is a lush, homespun collection of folk songs that found Meg in an exploratory state as an artist moving out on their own for the first time.

Two years later, Hand Habits has returned with their sophomore album, Placeholder. To make this album, Meg chose to work in a studio and bring in collaborators, entrusting them with what had previously been a very personal creative process. Over the course of 12 tracks, Meg emerges with new confidence as both a bandleader and singer. This album is as tender and immediate as anything Meg's ever written, but it's also intensely focused and refined, the work of a meticulous musician ready to share their singular vision with the world.

In 2018, as the wildfires raged in Southern California when Meg wrote the bulk of Placeholder; the anxiety that came with living in L.A. during that time exposes itself throughout these songs. The flames that fuel Placeholder occasionally billow out, but most often these songs are warm and comforting - a space listeners can return to again and again when the outside world starts to overwhelm. Meg describes these songs as their most direct to date, crafted with clear intention, and unlike Wildly Humble, Placeholder doesn't meander. As a lyricist, Meg is drawn to the in-between, and the songs on this new album primarily confront the ways in which certain experiences can serve as a stepping stone on the road to self-discovery.

While Placeholder inspires a sense of ease, simple questions rarely beget easy answers and Meg honors the indescribable joy and profound sorrow that comes with figuring things out, one step at a time.

1. Placeholder
2. Can't Calm Down
3. Pacify
4. Jessica
5. Yr Heart (Reprise)
6. Heat
7. Are You Serious?
8. Wildfire
9. What's the Use
10. Guardrail/Pwrline
11. What Lovers Do
12. The Book On How To Change Part II