Before She’s Everybody’s

The YouTube algorithm had been trying to tell me something for two weeks—every recommendation the same general type: singer, guitar, something slightly off-center about the whole thing. Eventually I stopped scrolling and listened.

Her name is Ashe—born Ashlyn Willson, 24, from San Jose, now living in San Diego with Los Angeles circled somewhere on an internal map. She studied at Berklee and signed to Mom+Pop, which is also Flume’s label and Alina Baraz’s label. The name comes from Carole King, her primary reference point: Ash alone felt truncated, so she added the E. Her other compass points include Stevie Nicks, John Mayer, Justin Vernon, and—interestingly—Diane Keaton. She also wrote You Don’t Do It for Me Anymore for Demi Lovato before any of this took off, which means she can work to someone else’s brief without disappearing into it.

The debut EP is Rabbit Hole. Real Love from that record landed on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist and took off accordingly. Before any of that she was auditioning in Nashville and touring with Quinn XCII across the country—the standard trajectory for someone who knows what they’re doing but hasn’t been found yet.

What she makes is alternative pop, loosely. Moral of the Story, Choirs, Girl Who Cried Wolf—bright enough to stick, strange enough to stay interesting. The voice is the thing. It has a quality where a thirty-second clip feels insufficient, and then the song ends and you go back to the beginning.

I’m completely gone on her, which happens. The only thing worth saying is: find her now, before she’s everywhere, so later you can tell people you were there first. It doesn’t matter, but it does.