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May 16, 2025 Web Exclusive By Mark Moody Photography by Lucas Creighton

Jordan Topf’s path to a solo career (he performs as Windser) travelled some well-worn trails, but with a decidedly unconventional twist. Raised in Santa Cruz, California, the music surrounding him at a young age was fairly typical. “My mom was into folk music, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and my dad was into the early rock stuff like The Rolling Stones,” Topf shares via Zoom from his Los Angeles studio. “That was influential to me early on, but when I got to high school I started to develop my own tastes. Bands like The Velvet Underground and The Cure had a huge impact on me and [hearing them] was just so earth-shattering.”

Topf started playing guitar and taking lessons when he was seven. His dad would often play a VHS tape of Woodstock. Seeing Jimi Hendrix play really inspired Topf to the point he was playing in his room up to six hours a day. “I auditioned for jazz band in high school and ended up being a jazz band reject. The choice didn’t up being who was the best guitar player, but was more political. The guy’s mom was a donor to the school or something. So I was like, ‘Screw this, I’m just going to start my own band,’” Topf explains.

During high school, Topf and a friend of his would record and burn CDs of their own music. And Topf insisted that his role was to be strictly lead guitar. “My friend said that my voice was different and that I should be the singer. So it was decided and I got some vocal lessons too, because I had no formal training in how to be a singer. When I went to college in New York I formed another group there called Mainland.”

Mainland stuck together for a few years and even toured. “We did an EP with Jim Eno of Spoon producing, which was pretty great.” The Shiner EP came out in 2014 and does sound a bit like Spoon. “We went down to Austin to record with him and it got us some buzz,” Topf continues. “We signed a record deal and were on tour a lot. We all moved back to California, to LA, because it didn’t make any sense to be in New York anymore. And a few years later we broke up.”

During the pandemic, Topf moved back to Northern California and endeavored to start a solo career. Topf’s Windser alter ego is inspired by the name of the street he grew up on. The first Windser EP, Where the Redwoods Meet the Sea, came out in 2022, but it was prior to that when Topf got an unlikely dose of stardom. “When I first came to L.A. one of the first people I met was Sam Hollander,” he says, referring to the songwriter/producer who has dozens of writing and production credits on many Billboard hits. “I’m unsigned at that point and he said he would give me a couple hundred bucks to record my voice singing some of his melodies so he could pitch hooks to different artists. One of the songs was pitched to Ryan Lewis of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis fame. And they heard my voice on ‘Next Year,’” Topf recalls.

“When they heard the song they were like, ‘Who is the singer? He has to be on the song.’ I flew to Seattle the next week to shoot a music video and we also finished the song. The video is hilarious. I’m in some type of hot tub boat and Macklemore is kayaking through the bay right off Seattle. Macklemore was so nice to me. I had like three songs out at the time and he graciously promoted me a bunch. We played Jimmy Fallon and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve show. We ended up writing a second song called ‘Maniac.’ It was crazy how all that happened,” Topf says. “Next Year” and “Maniac” have almost 50 million Spotify streams and Windser has a co-sign on them.

Flash forward a few years, and Topf is on the cusp of releasing his first album, self-titled as Windser. The album has 11 songs of primarily sunny pop, with a dose of Bleachers on the more upbeat tunes and more than a hint of Local Natives’ Hummingbird-era dreamier pop on the more subtle tunes (check out “Skeletons” for evidence). But the album starts with a song based on a heart-rending moment. When Topf was seven years old, his dad abandoned him in their hotel room in Costa Rica for nearly 24 hours. The song is titled, appropriately enough, “Abandon” and Topf was willing to bravely dive deep on the inspirations and his feelings around the song.

“My parents were divorced when I was six years old. My dad was a school principal and he spoke Spanish. So he and I would go on these trips to places like Mexico and Costa Rica where he could speak the language. So when I was seven on this trip to Costa Rica my dad said to me, ‘I’ll be right back,’ but he didn’t come back for a full day,” Topf says. His dad apparently took off on a motorcycle with a woman he had just met. “I was really scared and I remember crawling into the bed and crying. I didn’t have a cell phone, so I couldn’t call my mom. I felt very afraid and abandoned,” Topf continues.

“This song is a specific story, but there are a lot of songs about my dad on this album. We had a complicated relationship. It was very loving, but there were also some challenges obviously. I lost my dad when I was 22. There’s not a lot of men out there talking about their problematic relationships with their fathers. I wish there was. I think my dad struggled with loneliness and there’s this emptiness inside of you that you want to fill with love. He didn’t realize that the love I had for him in that moment was enough. I was just a kid when this happened and I really didn’t understand. I felt like the only way I could process that was to make a song about it.”

No doubt, “Abandon” is the most direct song on the album, but all are carefully crafted and many are brightly colored confections. Surrounding himself with a cadre of top notch studio musicians, including Harrison Whitford (Phoebe Bridgers) and Dan Bailey (Father John Misty), all of the tracks were recorded without vocals, which Topf later added in a week long session. One of the best songs on the album, “Head in the Clouds,” is just a perfect pop song. “I can be a little spacey sometimes. My spaciness is just a coping mechanism, so that song is someone telling me to get off the couch and get my head out of the clouds,” Topf says. “Harrison’s guitar playing on that song is amazing.”

Though Topf says the album is not specifically thematic, he does say that there is an arc from early childhood challenges and conflict to more of an element of healing and love as the album progresses. One of the album’s softer moments, “In the Flowers,” occurs near the end of its journey from despair to hope. “You’ve got to have a ballad there at the end,” Topf concludes. “That one is really just about how healing nature can be.”

www.windsermusic.com

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