Suki Waterhouse and Ashe on Channeling ‘Existential Dread’ for Dreamy Collaboration ‘Pushing Daisies’: ‘We Were Both Slightly Dazed From Our Respective Worlds’ (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Ellise Shafer When Ashe walked into a session with Suki Waterhouse last summer, she hadn’t written a song in six months. The California-born singer-songwriter had just recently moved to Nashville and was on a hiatus of sorts from the industry after canceling a tour to prioritize her mental health. “I was like, ‘Fine, but put your expectations really low,'” Ashe says of agreeing to the session on a Zoom call with Variety and Waterhouse. “I would never have known,” Waterhouse interjects. “I knew you’d been taking a break, but you walked in just like a ray of sunshine with these beautiful flowers.” A day in the studio later and “Pushing Daisies” was born, the duo’s dreamy, psychedelia-twinged collaborative track.

Inspired by the flowers Ashe brought (though neither of them can remember if they were, in fact, daisies) and Waterhouse’s insomnia, the song combines tongue-in-cheek lyricism with an undeniably catchy hook and fuzzy backing vocals.

Ashe and Waterhouse — the musician, model and actor whose brand of sun-soaked indie-pop earned her a spot opening for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in London this summer — had first met in 2020 when Ashe was visiting Waterhouse’s native London. “We just went for a tea and chatted,” Waterhouse says, recounting being struck by Ashe’s “illuminating beauty.” In the music world, “it’s pretty unusual to hang out and just be like, ‘That’s a great, cool person,'” Waterhouse continues. “To have somebody that you can talk to that’s in the same industry at any point ever is always just a huge blessing.

So yeah, I was head over heels.” “Aw, Suki!” Ashe exclaims. “I mean, likewise. I just remember being like, ‘Oh man, how annoying — she’s so cool and down to earth and pretty,’ and just checked all these.