Smoochies

Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2025

Ashnikko

The 29-year-old singer/rapper blew up on TikTok with her 2019 breakthrough hit “STUPID,” joining the pantheon of defiantly bawdy, cyborgian e-girls. On her second studio album, which follows 2023’s apocalyptic WEEDKILLER, Ashnikko hones her pop songwriting chops while valiantly striving to kill her inner It Girl. (See “It Girl,” a decaying folk song about rejecting the allure of external validation.) On Smoochies, she recruits a crack team of weirdo-pop producers (longtime collaborator Slinger, plus Elvira Anderfjärd, Luka Kloser, and Tove Burman, who wrote and produced Addison Rae’s 2025 debut) for sweet, tough, and distinctly modern love songs. “I want you in my body like microplastics,” she sings on “Microplastics,” and on “Trinket,” she collects boys like Labubus and dangles them from her purse. On “Smoochie Girl,” she wonders over glitchy sugar-rush synths: “Is this too much to keep a lock of your hair in a resin ring? Is this too much? I wanna take out my IUD.”