Sasami Is a No-Fear Artist Who Plays Truth or Dare
Indie pop’s Sasami dishes on multiple genres, records, and instruments (like French horn) that have become a way of life. She’s also funny as hell.
Blood on the Silver Screen Sasami Domino 7 March 2025
One of the more fascinating solo artists I encountered while checking out the lineup for the Kilby Block Party festival, which takes place 15-18 May in Salt Lake City, is a multidimensional Renaissance woman with a one-stage name. She isn’t Madonna, Rihanna, or Shakira. Want to take a guess?
Sasami is a Northern California-based no-fear musician who learned to shred the guitar while in college, became a music teacher, didn’t start writing songs until the age of 27, and tackles almost any genre, from punk to metal to some of the most beautiful pop tunes since Sarah McLachlan started building a mystery.
Sasami‘s funny as hell. That became clearly evident during a 40-minute phone interview as she worried about cell reception during a van ride from Atlanta to her next tour stop in Washington DC, on May Day. The tour began on 7 March, the release date of her third full-length album, Blood on the Silver Screen.
Receiving some critical acclaim for its pure pop magic, Sasami cracks wise just a few minutes into the interview, “The way that capitalism and social media work, you’re always supposed to kind of feel there’s not enough (praise) and feel bad about yourself. I think that’s the goal of social media companies: to make you feel bad all the time. So I try my best to feel like things are going well.” (laughs)
Assured by her PopMatters interviewer that there’s reality in those rave reviews, she cleverly replies without missing a beat, “If you think it’s so, then I must trust you.” (laughs)
Sometimes it’s hard to discern whether Sasami is winking wryly or nodding resolutely. While weighing the pros and cons of playing in a band or continuing a solo career as a now-confident songwriter, she blurts, “I would say my dream now is to write songs for hot young kids that want to tour so I can stay home.” Another cute hoot gives it away. Then a later revelation—her interest in studying “mycology, like mushrooms and fungus and slime molds”—seems to need a punch line that never comes. Will the surreal Sasami please stand up? Or just keep us guessing?
Sasami Ashworth, an Upstate New York native born to an American dad and Korean mom, doesn’t take life too seriously. Her music is a different matter, though. Growing up in Los Angeles since she was “basically an infant”, and raised by parents in the Unification Church who were married in Madison Square Garden, those West Coast roots were established so that her grandparents and their kin could live in the same city.
Though moving north a couple of years ago, those strong family ties remain. Her youngest brother, Juju, is a Los Angeles record producer. Other siblings “are normal people with normal lives” and have “traditional marriages and children” that help “take the pressure off of me for my parents (who still live in Los Angeles) to have to provide any sort of normal offspring. So I bless them for that.”
Nerd Is the Word
Sasami became a self-proclaimed “goth band nerd”, taking trips with the middle school band to places like Cape Canaveral. As a youngster, she got a nice variety of classic rock, listening to Dire Straits and Fleetwood Mac mixed CDs her dad made. Karaoke runs were encouraged by her mom, who sang tunes from the 1960s and 1970s, “almost like Joan Baez kind of Japanese folk songs”.
A “relatively normal suburban Los Angeles upbringing with a little twist of cult religion and (laughs) a little bit of dabbling in sports and jock activities” was how she summed up those early years. “I guess when you put it all on paper, it’s not very normal when your parents get mass-married in Madison Square Garden and you’re a pop jock that plays French horn. To me, it was normal.” Of course, she recognized that shopping “at Spencer’s Gifts and wearing black eyeliner” was part of her “niche” as well.
So, studying that classical instrument at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (where she first met up with the Haim sisters before eventually touring with them) didn’t stop Sasami from exploring her somewhat unconventional side. Into bands like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, and albums such as tr (“you know, like 12 X U”), she reveals, “British post-punk like Television was kind of more my vibe.” (laughs)
Unafraid to go on an adventure while learning to become classically trained in college at a conservatory benefited her music education, which continued at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. “Everything is a little bit like a second, third, fourth language for me,” Sasami offers. “I wouldn’t say I was a punk or a rock kid or a metal kid; I just was a music nerd that kind of world-traveled into all these different genres and foraged different sounds as I went along. I don’t claim any of them as my home base, except for maybe classical.”
Sasami claims that the music theory knowledge she obtained became a blessing and a curse. Being able to “decode so many different genres and interlope with them” was definitely a plus. “But maybe the curse is that it’s easier for me to have like musical ADHD and jump around. Instead of just like having one thing that I know how to do and getting really good at it, I kind of just fuck around with a lot of stuff.”
While in college, she also picked up the guitar. After “getting kind of burned out on the competition and the perfectionism of the classical world,” it was a way to have “fun playing music again and not being such a perfectionist about it.”
The Beatles, Elliott Smith, and “a lot of kind of more acoustic stuff” were jumping-off points for Sasami. She also mentions jazz’s Bill Frisell while blanking on the name of the late king of acoustic guitar, who “did all those amazing acoustic Christmas albums”. However, plugging into the instrument was the gift that kept on giving.
“I have so many different guitar heroes, and then, of course, the Wilson sisters. Heart was such an influence on me, making rock music. St. Vincent was a huge influence on me when I first started, producing and writing songs,” Sasami continues, excited to hear that Annie Clark will power up at Kilby only a few hours after she does.
While those influences remain part of Sasami’s musical DNA, her style and taste took a turn upon graduating and returning home. No genre was safe from her grasp, be it Mike Watt’s “Long Beach punk rock scene” or the “DIY kind of post-punk garage scene that I came up in in Echo Park,” she fondly remembers, embracing distortion and dissonant guitar tones.
“We were so lucky growing up in LA. It would be like a Friday night, and I could go see Wire play at the Echoplex. “Or whatever version of Gang of Four was touring at the time, you could see them play at the Fonda (Theatre). Growing up in LA, it’s like every night an iconic rock band is coming through town.”
After playing keyboards with bands like Cherry Glazerr or artists such as King Tuff, it took only the first two albums after signing as a solo artist with British independent label Domino in 2018, to go from one extreme to another.
Squeeze Play
Releasing her self-titled solo debut album on 8 March 2019, Sasami felt some relief after being in “a project that, like, very naturally came to an end” and becoming “so awestruck” by “this kind of romanticized experience of being the bandleader in the studio”.
Though earlier saying with a laugh, “To think that this is a glamorous job, you’d have to be quite delusional,” she also enjoyed doing double duty as a solo artist willing to play in other bands while also getting paid to open for them. “I just like making music,” Sasami adds. “I wasn’t born thinking that I would be a frontperson. I don’t feel like it’s the thing that makes me feel whole. It’s just part of my life.”
After releasing her first record of gentle fragility, she called “introspective” that was made for herself, Sasami unleashed Squeeze in 2022. It’s an 11-song experiment in terror that includes nu-metal ear-bleeders, ball-busting guitar licks and head-pounding drum strikes, the latter courtesy of Megadeth‘s Dirk Verbeuren.
Shuffling “Skin a Rat” and the cover of Daniel Johnston’s raging “Sorry Entertainer” back to back on a playlist could feel like a one-two punch to the noggin. Yet Sasami shows mercy by inserting “The Greatest” and a lovely rendition of the King Tuff-penned “Call Me Home” in between.
Sasami called Squeeze “a reaction to touring that one and feeling kind of overexposed and wanting to make more overaggressive, loud music. Because in some ways it felt more like a character.” She also recruited her friend’s progressive metal band, Vermont’s Barishi, to play on some of the album’s songs and tour. Life on the road became a physical stress test, though, requiring extra gym workouts.
“I was playing like a Lucite Mockingbird guitar that was really heavy and we were carrying Marshall half stacks around and I was running around on stage and I had to, like, really do so much cardio exercise to be able to sing and run that much,” divulges Sasami, who also doubles as tour manager/hotel booker when she isn’t entertaining.
After a dark dose of metal maneuvers, she eventually rediscovered and appreciated seeing the light of day, which is pop music. “You might listen to a lot of metal when you’re lifting weights, but if you’re running and going to exercise classes, it’s pretty much like four-on-the-floor pop music the whole time,” Sasami remarks with a laugh. “So I’m like, ‘There’s a reason why this music makes you feel like you can run another mile or do ten more pushups.’ There’s something really uplifting about pop music.”
Hence, accepting her love for that genre again, Blood on the Silver Screen was born as Sasami began feeling “super-confident with songwriting”. Writing all 13 songs (while working with co-producers Jennifer Decilveo and Rostam Batmanglij), the beauty came from what she called “a very pure place”.
That wasn’t long after the magnificent madness of Squeeze’s heavenly hell had her running out of breath. Eager to exercise “my ability to write pop songs and learning the craft of it,” her standout tracks include “Slugger”, which Sasami calls “the perfect pop song … an all-American banger” and “In Love With a Memory”, an elegant duet with a nostalgic twist featuring Clairo.
“I really enjoyed (making) ‘In Love With a Memory’. Rostam pushed me to make a beautiful arrangement, and it was so cool to write the MIDI guitar solo and then have my friend Graham (Brooks) play the solo. There are a lot of classical chord progressions that are woven into that song. But it still had a very traditional pop kind of progression songwriting in it also,” Sasami shares.
“I guess on this album I’ve been trying to focus on like the fact that the people that I’m performing for are in a position of largely not knowing what’s happening and only just feeling and absorbing what’s happening,” she reasons. “I always say that what we do is kind of like being the engineer who created Disneyland.
“Like everyone else gets to ride the ride, and you’re just hoping that the gears don’t break and the roller coaster doesn’t fall off the track. So it feels a little bit unromantic sometimes, but it is really special, and there are moments when I get to watch the audience absorb our performance and connect with them.”
K-pop Matters
The tour that began in March included early Korean dates in Seoul and Busan, along with a stop in Tokyo. “That was my first time performing in Asia,” Sasami gleefully points out. “I have family in Korea and Japan, so I’ve been there a bunch. This was my first time connecting with audiences there, and I hope it’s the start of many, many times performing there. The crowd was so receptive and fun. They were quiet and introspective in the mellow parts and moshing in the heavier parts. So it’s kind of the dream crowd. They’re along for the full Sasami ride.”
While singing in English, “I’m very adamant about learning the local cuss words and slang so at least I can make them laugh between songs,” she quips, with a laugh herself. Though she jokes “that K-pop is almost like American pop on steroids”, the explosion has gotten her attention, too. “My mom is Korean, and I know that Koreans abroad are so proud of Korea for even being on the global radar,” Sasami states. “So I think that it’s like all human existence and culture. We’re all influencing each other at different times, and so it’s kind of cool to see Korean culture be at the forefront right now.”
New Jeans, Illit, Blackpink, and indie Korean band Se So Neon, fronted by Hwang Soyoon, are a few artists she follows, while “trying to learn more of the indie acts” during her time there.
Now, Sasami is looking forward to winning over a Kilby Block Party crowd with backing band members Eliza Petrosyan on guitar and Diego Patino on drums when they hit the Desert Stage from 2:10-2:50 pm on 17 May. Performing at the event for the first time after previously playing Kilby Court (“the seed of the actual monstrosity of the festival”) and last June at Metro Music Hall, opening for DIIV, this audience might expect the full Sasami ride, too.
“We’ve got mosh moments, we’ve got acoustic guitar moments. We’ve got French horn moments,” she proclaims. “It’s a journey, for sure.”
So hold on, SLC folks. You may ask yourself: Can those 40 minutes of fury from Sasami and Co. onstage have more thrills, spills, and chills than the Incredicoaster at Disney California Adventure? Don’t dare hazard a guess because one thing is for sure: She’ll leave you screaming for more.