Ethel Cain Essentials

As a Southern Baptist raised in Florida, singer-songwriter-producer Hayden Silas Anhedönia came into her own after transforming into doom-pop provocateur Ethel Cain in the late 2010s. Born in 1998, she grew up listening to Christian music and studying classical piano, both of which heavily influence even her darkest dirges. Anhedönia built up the Cain mythology with a series of ghostly, goth-soaked EPs, but it was her expansive 2022 debut album, Preacher’s Daughter, that revealed her full cinematic vision. Amid a potent concoction of slowcore, Americana, ambient and alt-rock, Cain dissects religion, trauma, gender identity and the decay of the American dream.