You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe.

Hayden Anadonia has been making music under the name Ethel Cane since 2019.

But it's not just a band name or a moniker.

Ethelcane is a fictional character, a sort of alter ego that Hayden's been creating and

world-building around throughout her albums.

The first Ethelcane album, Preacher's Daughter, came out in 2022.

It ended up blowing up, and it made Hayden the first openly trans artist with an album in the top 10 on the Billboard chart.

In 2025, she put out the second Athelcane album called Willoughby Tucker I'll Always Love You.

It's a prequel to the first album.

For this episode, I talked to Hayden about how she made the song Nettles.

As you're about to hear, it took on a lot of different forms

over several years before she got to the final version.

Tell me all the time not too heavy.

Think of all the time I'll have you

when I won't wake up on my own, wake up on my own.

Out close all the time, now when I'm half of you.

My name is Hayden Onidonia, also known as Ethelcane. And the project of Ethelcane is like this big kind of sweeping narrative.

And what era is the world of Ethelcane set in?

Willoughby Tucker spans from 1986 to 1990,

so it goes through her last two years of high school

and her first two years of adulthood.

...