The FADER’s longstanding GEN F series profiles the emerging artists you need to know right now.
Ninajirachi is backstage beneath the blacklights and the whole venue is screaming. It’s a bitterly cold night in Cleveland, Ohio, approximately 15,321 kilometers from her sun-drenched hometown on Australia’s Central Coast, and Nina’s about to play the last date of her first headlining North American tour.
To say it’s been successful is an understatement. Some shows hit capacity and others were rebooked for larger venues. Earlier, in the greenroom, she joked that she’ll have to change the first line of her album after an upcoming trip overseas: I’ve never been to London… And that’s the truth! Back in September, when she played Denver’s Larimer Lounge for the third time and walked through the sold-out crowd to the stage, fans clamoring for autographs and pictures, it hit her: This is the most people have ever cared about my music.
That’s no small feat for the 26-year-old who’s been making critically acclaimed electronica since she was a teenager. Her August 2025 debut album, I Love My Computer, catapulted her heartfelt, effervescent “girl EDM” to new heights, including a record-breaking eight nominations at the ARIA Awards (she took home three). The gushing reception has been gratifying, but the learning curve has been steep, especially for an artist whose “really small” team is “indie on every front,” she says. Signed to Nina Las Vegas’s NLV Records, Ninajirachi and co. have been tackling large-scale logistics as they navigate big markets and bigger festivals. In April, she’ll play Coachella, then Primavera Sound over the summer.
“We don't have the high production, bombastic EDM shows and festivals at home in Australia, so I was shocked by it when I first came and played Hard Summer [in 2023],” she says of U.S. festivals. “I wasn’t used to seeing the pyrotechnics, put-your-hands-up type stuff. But then I became really inspired by it because of how, at least the shows I was going to, diverse and safe and fun the crowds were, and how everyone was having a good time. And there were so many girls in the crowd I thought, there’s maybe a place for me here.”
There were so many girls in the crowd I thought, there’s maybe a place for me here.
Ninajirachi was born Nina Jo Wilson on August 10, 1999, and grew up in Kincumber, New South Wales, a couple hours north of Sydney. She split her time between the great outdoors (her hometown beaches are “really awesome”) and the great indoors (she had a litany of “computer-related hobbies” including iWeb and iMovie). She would make fake websites for the family cats, or “0.00001 megapixel, shittiest quality” music videos of herself dancing to “Alejandro” by Lady Gaga.
When she was 12, Nina discovered instrumental dance music through a YouTube tutorial on tie-dying denim. “Madeon’s ‘Pop Culture’ mash-up was in the background,” she recalls. “It was the first time I heard music that didn’t have a big vocal in front of it, so I could hear all the production. I didn’t understand what soft synths were or anything, so I would try to look up what is making this noise? I just wanted to understand it.” She experimented on GarageBand until she “hit a wall,” then pirated FL Studio, where she honed her skills for five years; nowadays she’s “spec’ed into” Ableton (in 2021, she created the official demo project for Live 11).
Nina describes her earliest songs as “rip-offs” that fumbled the tension and release of the tracks she was mimicking because she’d never been to a club or festival. “I didn’t understand why EDM had a buildup and a drop, or why that was a formula,” she says. “So I would use presets that sounded like the right thing, but the structure of the songs was all over the place.” As she attended more shows, she says her initial perceptions of the “bro-y” electronic scene softened. “Now it seems like the people who go to those shows look a lot different.”
At 15, she adopted the stage name Ninajirachi, a reference to the super-rare Pokémon Jirachi, because, “all the other names that I tried sounded silly.” Nina, a dedicated Pokémon fan, never encountered her namesake in-game: “I’ve honestly formed more of an attachment to Jirachi through music,” she says, adding that her other favorites are the sinister Giratina and cuddly Piplup (of which she owns a plush and a tattoo).
Like her namesake Pokémon, Ninajirachi’s music is intense, adorable, and deepest-desire-fulfilling, braiding disparate fibers into tautly muscled tunes. The mix of bloghouse, trance, and hardstyle on I Love My Computer recombines DNA from Skrillex and Flume’s big-tent EDM with the flubbery pop of PC Music and Porter Robinson. But it best fits alongside the music of Zedd and Cashmere Cat, artists whose earnest electronics prioritize heart-tugging as much as head-banging.
On the surface, I Love My Computer is a concept album about Nina and her MacBook. But that’s a bit of a pump fake. These songs might sing about screens, but they’re really focused on the intimate contours of how PCs augment our human reality, whether they’re exposing us to uninvited cognito-hazards or crystallizing everyday moments into lifelong memories.
I just want everyone to sing along and hopefully make friends.
Take the percussive refrain of “CSIRAC,” titled after the first computer to play digital music in 1951, or the nervy chorus of “Delete,” a track Nina built around a seven-year-old voice memo that excavates the humiliation of our “modern mega digital meta mating ritual,” or thirst trapping. These songs prod listeners to confront their rawest emotions, from the need for connection to the urge to log off, then pay back that vulnerability with ecstatic, delirious drops.
“It's the first time so much music that’s literally about me has been on one body of work,” Nina says of the project. “I guess I just had the right songs, and also had the confidence in the fact that my life is interesting enough to write music about for the first time.”
Backstage in Ohio, Nina peeks around the curtain as a glitchy stream of text scrolls across her enormous LCD backdrop. 4, 5, 6, 2… I, love, my, computer, synthesized voices chant. The roar of the crowd is picking up like a jet engine.
Earlier, as we sipped Throat Coat tea in the greenroom, Nina told me how she’s been managing her Discord server during the tour, with separate threads for each city to help her fans connect as a community. That peer-to-peer gesture might seem at odds with the hyperconsumptive nature of the electronic circuit, but Nina’s personal touch on mainstage music convinces me she’d rather change the scene around her before she lets it change her.
“With the shows, I hope I can throw a big party where everyone feels welcome and everyone can be really sweaty and exert a lot of energy, but also feel super happy and safe,” she says. “I just want everyone to sing along and hopefully make friends.”
4562… girlEDM… her stageshow drones. I love my computer, I love my computer, I love my computer… ThisIsMyName Ninajirachi… I’ve never been to C L E V E L A N D. A barrage of images strobe as she saunters out to the decks in an all-black fit and chunky Rick Owens Ramones camouflaged beneath nylon legwarmers. The moment she enters sight, the entire venue loses their shit.
“Alright Cleveland — jump!” Ninajirachi shouts. They do.
