From the age of five, Lindsey Jordan started having “really intense” classical guitar lessons, practising two hours a day. Over the following decade she played for her local church (in Ellicott City, Maryland), a jazz band, and in school plays, as well as being in the boys’ ice hockey team. After getting involved with the DIY punk scene in nearby Baltimore, she started making music as Snail Mail. By 15 she had written her first EP, Habit, which attracted more than a dozen label offers, with its melodic, lo-fi charm and Jordan’s powerfully evocative voice.

Now, less than a year after she graduated from high school, and on the verge of releasing her debut album, Lush, Snail Mail has been described as a “prodigy” by Billboard, and as “the wisest teenage indie rocker we know” by Pitchfork; her single Pristine was dubbed “an indie rock masterpiece” and a “truly perfect song” by the Fader. At Coachella earlier this month, she joined Angel Olsen on stage and made friends with Liz Phair.

Snail Mail is often spoken of in the same breath as Sheer Mag, Soccer Mommy and Lucy Dacus – a new wave of young, female indie rock musicians – although she also owes a considerable debt to guitarists Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn and Mark Kozelek.

“I would love people to just listen and not be so obsessed with the fact that I’m a girl, or that I’m gay, or 18,” she has said. “Being a girl is not a genre.”

• Lush is released on Matador on 8 June; Snail Mail plays Oslo, Hackney (15 May); Brudenell Social Club, Leeds (19th); Gullivers, Manchester (20th); and the Louisiana, Bristol (21st)