Blue-haired, genderfluid and gloriously unfiltered, Ashnikko turns feminine rage, queer desire and fantasy spectacle into some of pop’s most thrillingly strange music
Ashnikko has built a career from the emotions women and queer people are often encouraged to hide. Her songs revel in anger, lust, heartbreak, revenge, silliness and bodily autonomy, delivered through a collision of bubblegum pop, rap, industrial electronics and horror-movie theatrics.
The American artist uses she/they pronouns and has described herself as pansexual and genderfluid. Her queerness runs through her lyrics, visual worlds and understanding of community. Songs including the sapphic fantasy “Slumber Party” and the deeply personal “Miss Nectarine” give same-sex attraction space to be explicit, playful and complicated.
That honesty carries particular weight because Ashnikko grew up without visible queer role models. She has recalled reaching adulthood before meeting an openly queer person and spending years treating her identity as a “huge, shameful secret.”
“That stuff still lives with you through adulthood,” she told The Forty-Five. “It takes active unpicking to dismantle those ideas in your head.”
Her concern for younger LGBTQ+ people is equally direct. Discussing political attacks on trans communities in the United States, she said: “My heart really hurts, especially for queer kids and trans kids in small towns like where I’m from.”
Fantasy gives those experiences spectacular new forms. For 2023’s WEEDKILLER, Ashnikko created a dystopian story about a fairy warrior fighting machines that consume the natural world. The character’s torn wings, reconstructed body and battles for survival became symbols of violated boundaries, environmental destruction and the struggle to reclaim power. At its centre was a theme Ashnikko described as “finding yourself amidst being beaten down”.
Her 2025 album, Smoochies, brings the focus closer to Ashnikko’s life. Its world is messy, funny, sexual and defiantly playful, with songs exploring heartbreak, self-expression, modern romance and desire freed from the male gaze. Ashnikko told EUPHORIA. that she enjoys placing “messy and serious and silly and sexy” ideas within the same song.
Her work offers audiences permission to take up space in every form: glamorous, grotesque, wounded, furious, tender and horny. Femininity becomes a source of invention. Gender becomes something to play with. Pain can become a creature, a chorus or an entire parallel universe.
Aotearoa audiences will enter that universe when Ashnikko opens the Australasian leg of her Smoochies Tour in Auckland. She has developed the show as musical theatre filled with choreography, performance art and dramatic interludes, promising fans an immersive journey through a feverish parallel dimension.
For an artist who once had to unpick shame in private, creating a room where thousands of queer fans can become loud, strange and free feels powerfully full circle.
