Many young female musicians who were heralded as prodigies have made music this year revisiting the barbarity of that early renown, the powerlessness they felt as teenagers trapped in an all-consuming gaze. Lorde described having “nightmares from the camera flash”; Billie Eilish observed “a stalker walking up and down the street”; Clairo spoke about being “just useless and a whore” but still getting cosigned by “your favorite one-man show” after being sexualized in the industry. To deal with the aftereffects of a “young life colliding with sudden fame,” Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail—who became an indie rock phenom after she released her debut album, Lush, at 18—spent time at a recovery facility. There she charted out arrangements for what would be her upcoming second album, Valentine, later building on and refining those sketches in North Carolina with producer Brad Cook. Her intimate worlds, usually confined to a “you” and “I,” now face unwanted intruders: “Careful in that room,” she warns a lover on Valentine’s title track. “Those parasitic cameras, don’t they stop to stare at you?”

The most striking change on “Valentine” is Jordan’s voice, which is deeper, hoarser, and more mature than before. It cuts through foggy, cinematic synths as she lays out the unsteady dynamics of a relationship (“You’ve gotta live/And I gotta go”) while emphasizing the force of her devotion (“Fuck being remembered/I think I was made for you”). “Valentine” is accompanied by a gory, high-drama music video in which Jordan plays a chambermaid to a high-society woman with whom she has an illicit affair; crestfallen and crazed after seeing her lover with a man, she binge-drinks, stuffs her face with cake, and eventually murders him. The song ratchets up from slow-jam to power pop, souring in an instant as Jordan reels from betrayal: “So why’d you want to erase me?” she cries, speeding into the question with all of her might. Jordan is shattered yet hopeful, anticipating future envy upon seeing her lover with someone else and preparing for when, not if, they change their mind. Undergirding all these emotions is a simple truth: “I adore you.”