Jordan Patterson – Cinderella
LA-based songwriter and producer Jordan Patterson will release her new EP, Songs From A Valley Girl, her first release with Secretly Canadian.
Already praised by The New York Times, Stereogum, KEXP, and more, the EP is as meticulously crafted as it is emotionally uninhibited. Patterson’s radically honest lyricism and singular vocal stylings come together to form a collection of songs that she aptly describes sound as “if grass met wire and a flower still bloomed.”
Today, Patterson reveals the final taste of the EP with focus track “Cinderella.”
Produced by frequent Dijon collaborators Mulherin, the new track is an exploration of the confusion, heartbreak, and acceptance that arise following a fractured relationship. Glimmering like a memory over a moody melody and enchanting harmonies, Patterson’s breathy timbre wavers as she repeats “Did I lose a good thing? / Or was that good thing me?,” weighing contradictory feelings that leave a lasting imprint of wistful melancholy. The accompanying live video of “Cinderella” features Patterson and producer Marshall Mulherin intimately performing on the back of a truck, deepening the quiet heartbreak at the song’s core.
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.
The project was produced alongside Eric Van Thyne, John Debold (Vampire Weekend, Haim, Grace Ives, Hozier), Henry Kwapis (Dominic Fike, Dijon, Selena Gomez), Kali Flanagan and Mulherin. Patterson has shared stages with Cameron Winter, Folk Bitch Trio, and 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. She will also be opening for Sharon Van Etten and Kevin Morby at Secretly Group’s ‘What Comes After The Blues’ showcase in Bloomington, Indiana this August.
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