SASAMI

Multi-instrumentalist Sasami Ashworth, who records under the moniker SASAMI, shapes her output by leaping across genres without hesitation and imprinting each with a distinctly personal signature. Her 2018 self-titled debut album immersed listeners in the layered sonorities of shoegaze and dream pop, while 2022’s Squeeze confronted the aggressive energy of nu-metal head-on; both projects also honored the intimate, confessional mode common among today’s singer-songwriters. By the arrival of Blood on the Silver Screen in 2025, Ashworth had developed the confidence to tackle mainstream pop on its own terms and bend it to her vision.

Raised in Los Angeles, she took up piano and French horn, the latter instrument carrying her to studies at the Eastman School of Music. After earning her degree in 2012 she balanced daytime work as an elementary-school music instructor with nighttime gigs as a sought-after session player. French-horn duties in orchestras and recordings led her to join Dirt Dress in 2013; she departed that ensemble in 2015 to play synthesizers both live and on Cherry Glazerr’s 2017 album Apocalipstick. Additional outside projects included string arrangements for Curtis Harding’s Face Your Fear and backing vocals on Wild Nothing’s Indigo. During a 2017 tour with Cherry Glazerr she began capturing her own material on a laptop in spare moments, an experience that prompted her to leave the group and pursue a solo path.

Enlisting her brother Joo Joo, guitarist in the shoegaze outfit Froth, along with Tomas Dolas of Mr. Elevator & the Brain Hotel, Ashworth tracked the largely spontaneous post-breakup songs she had amassed. The first SASAMI single, “Callous,” surfaced in April 2018 ahead of dates supporting King Tuff; Domino Records soon signed her, and a second single, the shoegaze-tinged “Not the Time,” followed in October. Froth drummer Cameron Allen anchored the rhythm section, forming SASAMI’s central trio with Joo Joo for the debut album. Additional contributors included Soko (whose sessions Ashworth had previously produced), Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy, Devendra Banhart, and Beach Fossils’ Dustin Payseur. Domino issued the resulting self-titled collection, which merged dream-pop and shoegaze textures with an introspective singer-songwriter sensibility, in March 2019.

The ensuing year found SASAMI concentrating on fresh material. After issuing a pair of standalone tracks—2020’s “Mess,” which fused Sheryl Crow songwriting with shoegaze guitars, and a hushed acoustic reading of System of a Down’s “Toxicity”—she delivered a heavy-metal treatment of Daniel Johnston’s “Sorry Entertainer” in 2021. These releases pointed toward the heavier, more eclectic direction fully realized on 2022’s Squeeze. The album blended downtuned metal riffs, Crow-style jangling folk, and dream-pop atmospheres, supported by a core lineup of King Tuff’s Kyle Thomas and Meg Duffy, both of whom had earlier enlisted Ashworth’s production skills while sharing a Los Angeles house. Guest appearances came from Megadeth drummer Dirk Verbeuren, Mitski, actress Patti Harrison, and Vagabon’s Lætitia Tamko. After headlining her own shows and serving as guitarist in yeule’s band for part of 2023, Ashworth returned in May 2024 with the single “Honeycrash,” a track steeped in doomy metal yet colored by contemporary pop production. The full-length that followed in January 2025, Blood on the Silver Screen, shifted decisively toward pop, with co-producers Jenn Decilveo and Rostam helping her both employ and subvert classic pop conventions while exploring themes of sex, power, and embodiment; Domino released the album that month.