Jordan Patterson – Songs From A Valley Girl
Today, LA-based songwriter and producer Jordan Patterson announces her latest project, Songs From A Valley Girl, her first release with Secretly Canadian.
Due out June 19, the EP is unfettered and poignantly human as Patterson yet again showcases her inimitable lyricism to reflect on the intersections between love, shame, rejection, and all of the contradictions that persist throughout the arc of the human experience.
To accompany the announcement, Patterson shared a first look into the EP with the single “Just My Friend.”
Steeped in the ambiguity of an undefined relationship, the song unfurls around Patterson’s distinctive vocals as a piano riff jangles atop longing harmonies. The heart of the track is in the repeating refrain, “Do you wanna be just my friend?,” landing like an exhausted confession, playful on the surface but aching for truth underneath. It’s a sharper, brighter sound for Patterson as she channels unsteady emotions into a pointed examination of friends, or more. Of the track, Patterson adds “I said what I said.” Additionally, Patterson shared a video of the song performed live, capturing the intensity of feelings present throughout the track.
Born in North Carolina and raised in the San Fernando Valley, Jordan Patterson has always operated from a place of radical honesty. Her debut album, The Hermit – a deeply personal document of solitude and self-examination that landed on The Fader’s Top 50 Records of 2025 – announced her as one of the most distinctive new voices in recent memory. The 24-year-old singer, songwriter, and producer has already been hailed as “a generational talent” by Spotify. Pitchfork has written that her singular voice “seems to propose a new paradigm” — and it’s hard to argue otherwise. What really marks Patterson as an exceptional talent, however, is her totally uninhibited artistic expression and a piercing earnestness that defines her sonic palette. Songs From A Valley Girl, her latest EP and first release on Secretly Canadian, is what comes next: smaller in scope, more concentrated in feeling, and somehow even more unmistakably hers. Patterson shares, “I said exactly what I meant to say. I felt like I believed in myself. I had a lot of faith. I was like, if I’m gonna make this EP, it’s gonna be exactly what I meant to say.”
The project draws its name from Patterson’s experience growing up in the San Fernando Valley. “There’s a line right where Burbank starts and trickles into the valley, and things shift and start to sprawl. You’re in a place that is not dissimilar but with this sense of spaciousness – more green, more parks, and craftsman homes that have been there for years and have allowed time to show its grace.” Patterson draws an affective line based on this phenomenon; there’s a line between history and repair, beauty and disgust, and claustrophobia and freedom. “This batch of music in particular feels like Sherman Oaks meets Van Nuys. That’s what this project feels like. It feels so inviting.” This sentiment of the valley mimics the central tension between shame and love that suffuses the entire EP. “The thing about shame is that, in being a monster, it wants you to come inside.” She reflects on the friction between the frivolity and intensity that imbued much of her adolescence in the valley, a friction that can only endure as all-consumingly as it does in the place you grew up.
Produced alongside Eric Van Thyne, John Debold (Vampire Weekend, Haim, Hozier), Henry Kwapis (Dominic Fike, Dijon, Selena Gomez), Kali Flanagan and Mulherin, the EP is as meticulously crafted as it is emotionally uninhibited. Patterson has shared stages with Cameron Winter, Folk Bitch Trio, and Jens Lekman, and just finished up joining Searows on their near-sold-out US tour before heading to End of the Road Festival and Pitchfork Paris and London later this year.
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