Searows, the project of Pacific Northwest singer-songwriter and guitarist Alec Duckart, releases his new album, Death in the Business of Whaling, on January 23, 2026 via Last Recordings On Earth.Though Death in the Business of Whaling arrives as Searows’ second album, it’s the product of many firsts, including his first time recording outside the creative cocoon of his bedroom. His 2022 debut Guard Dog was written, recorded and self-produced in Duckart’s Portland home and independently released with little expectation as to how it would be received. The music soon found a passionate audience that were already sharing snippets of Duckart’s music via communities on TikTok, as well as co-signs from artists like Ethel Cain, Gracie Abrams and Robin Pecknold. When the time came to commit the collection of ideas for his new record to tape, he set up shop in a converted horse barn outside of Seattle, keen to harness a greater sense of scale and space in the creation of the music, working this time with co-producer Trevor Spencer (Father John Misty, Beach House, Mary Lattimore) to expand his creative vision. “I had really wonderfully connective and intimate experiences sharing my first couple of projects with live audiences. Those projects were very personal and vulnerable and revealing my life and specific experiences to an audience began to feel a bit dissonant and exposing,” he explains. “One of my favourite things about music is its ability to connect people. It has done so for me time and time again and it has been so special to see my own writing do that for people too. I just began to learn that for myself, there were specifics that I wanted to keep for myself.” As a result, Duckart became interested in writing songs that read more like folklore. The songs became a vessel for digging deep and exploring his life and point of view, but in a way that spoke outwardly more symbolically than literally. “Something your subconscious understands before your conscious mind does. Visceral rather than literal. And that relationship to our deeper selves, our subconscious, our souls, is a major theme of the album for me. Most of these songs are about the different ways we all bump up against the human condition. Our spirit, the shadow self, our egos, trauma, love and fate. How we cope with our experiences and how we connect and take care of one another in an exceedingly dark and violent world. This record is still deeply personal to me. But it is an attempt to reveal my cards in a more coded, symbolic manner.”

North Carolina-born and LA-raised, Jordan Patterson is a 23-year-old singer, songwriter, and producer creating catharsis from an alternative landscape. Blunt, raw, and decisive, Patterson is crafting a world through her music by inviting listeners to absorb the depth of her humanity and imagination. She is perfectly and imperfectly human; her music is a direct reflection of her experience, leaving listeners with a peculiar familiarity and unidentified nostalgia.  Patterson began writing in elementary school, writing what she now describes as “poems that want to move.” She attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts as a theater major but was exposed to new forms of artistry that expanded the scope of her creativity. In 2020, she moved to New York to attend NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts but moved back to LA in 2021 to pursue music full-time.  In January of 2023, Jordan began recording her debut project, The Hermit, with Eric Van Thyne and Jacob Johanson (AKA JEHU). Patterson calls this album a “family project,” as she collaborated with dozens of local LA songwriters, instrumentalists, and vocalists in the process of creating the body of work. Collaborating with so many people shifted her process as a solo artist, as she began to view the craft of musicianship as a gift, both in practice and in play. The Hermit is genre-less by nature, as Patterson tiptoes around a plethora of different styles, sounds, and emotions to reflect her experience as authentically and as holistically as possible. The Hermit draws its name and quiet power from the archetype itself—a solitary figure carrying a lantern with the sun’s light inside. Patterson relates deeply to the image: “The hermit can’t always feel the sun on them even though they carry it,” she says. “It’s beautiful, but sad at the same time.” This sense of paradox runs throughout the project. On tracks like “Jim” and “God,” she explores the distance between fantasy and reality in love. Other songs unfold like dream-journal entries—introspective, surreal, yet precise in their emotional truths. Known for her magnetic and deeply cathartic live performances, which have earned her attention from artists such as Cameron Winter, Patterson balances raw vulnerability with a studied attention to detail. Her voice, often described as “melodic, then suddenly unsettling,” evokes both softness and strength—what she calls “a metal plate with grass on top.” It’s an apt metaphor for her music as a whole: a fusion of organic soulfulness and experimental edge, built from Ableton drum loops, layered guitar lines, and vocals sometimes tracked using only a headphone mic and family desktop. Following the release of The Hermit in September of 2025, Jordan has quickly become as a rare and special voice. The record earned the young songwriter national attention by outlets such as Pitchfork, The Guardian, Stereogum, KXSC, Nina Protocol, Rolling Stone, The Fader, The Line Of Best Fit and more as well as Spotify’s Editorial curators who included the song across various playlists including Editor’s Picks: Best Songs of August, Lorem, Juniper, New Music Friday, All New Indie, Fresh Folk. The Hermit’s roll-out also saw Jordan grace the cover of Spotify’s Fresh Finds, feature in the new weekly video series The Drop Weekly wher editor Lizzy Szabo described Jordan as a “generational talent,” and saw Jordan spend a week as the face of their Penn Plaza Billboard in late September.  Patterson continues to tour and record both throughout Los Angeles and nationally. She has supported artists such as Cameron Winter, Open Mike Eagle, Folk Bitch Trio, Jens Lekkman, and more alongside various headline gigs in NYC and LA. Patterson is now based in LA and continues to collaborate extensively with other artists in developing her newer projects.  At its core, Jordan’s music parallels her individual experience and the relationships that ignite her. Jordan is eternally dedicated to being an unadulterated novice, creating music that reflects her role as an artist who is perpetually “in progress.”