Rosy, amp-colored vocals reverberate from a small green house tucked deep in the hills of Laurel Canyon. Joni, the project of singer-songwriter Joni Fatora, spent the last year holed up in her home studio writing and recording songs for her 2020 EP, Orchid Room. The result is a haze of intimate songs — daydreamy and feminine, classic yet modern. With a patchwork of influences ranging from 60s Tropicália to early 2000s indie rock, Joni evokes the feeling of indie darlings Cat Power, Feist, and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Joni’s childhood was a whirlwind that spanned across three continents. The daughter of a submariner, she spent her formative years in Italy, Japan, and the southeastern shores of Connecticut; the one constant in her life was music. She easily picked up piano and various woodwinds as a kid, but only began writing her own songs after a guitar was gifted during her parent’s divorce. In 2013, a few credits shy of graduation, Joni dropped out of music school and moved to New York City. She put a band together and started playing at venues like Mercury Lounge, Brooklyn Bowl, and Webster Hall.

The risk paid off and it didn’t take long for her to sign a publishing deal with BMG. She found quick success in writing for major pop artists, earning an iHeartRadio music award and a platinum record – she also garnered hundreds of millions of streams as a featured vocalist on a string of projects. Despite the newfound success, Joni felt the restless pull back to her own artistry and moved to Los Angeles. She released a handful of singles: Omens, Botanical Baby, a cover of The Strokes’ I’ll Try Anything Once, and Blueless Bird, the latter of which garnered over a million streams and landed on Spotify’s US and Global Viral Top 50 playlists.

Orchid Room draws inspiration from fictional heroines, vivid dreams, late night drives, and Sophia Coppola films. Joni writes with poetic ambiguity but her hushed vocal remains earnest. From the cosmic slow-dance of Lost in Space, to wistful ruminations on the passage of time in Orange, Joni brings you into a world that’s uniquely her own. She worked with producers Mocky (Feist, Benny-Sings), Ali Chant (Perfume Genius, Soccer Mommy), frequent collaborators and hitmakers, Chris Petrosino and Rob McCurdy of Noise Club (Diana Gordon, Daniel Caesar) and mixer Brian Rosemeyer (Cat Power, Kurt Vile).

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