Music

Ninajirachi & Porter Robinson's 'WannaCry' Is the Trance Collab of the Summer

Ava Thompson
Music Editor · 4 hours ago

Ninajirachi and Porter Robinson unite on a throbbing new trance single previewed at Coachella and EDC Las Vegas — and Lorde definitely approves of this one.

Ninajirachi & Porter Robinson's 'WannaCry' Is the Trance Collab of the Summer

Ninajirachi has been on an absolute tear, and her latest move might be her biggest flex yet. The Australian electronic maximalist has linked up with Porter Robinson for "WannaCry," a pulse-racing trance collaboration that has been quietly detonating festival sets for weeks before finally arriving for the rest of us.

A Collab Born From Full-Circle Fandom

The chemistry here runs deeper than a simple feature swap. Robinson was the first artist Ninajirachi ever saw perform live — making this pairing something genuinely poetic rather than just strategically savvy. Two generations of forward-thinking electronic music colliding on a single track is the kind of origin story that writes itself, and "WannaCry" sounds like it knows exactly what it is: urgent, euphoric, and soaked in that particular brand of maximalist emotion that both artists have made their calling card.

According to Stereogum, the duo gave the track its live debut during a DJ set alongside underscores at Coachella, before Robinson threaded it into his set at EDC Las Vegas. By the time the studio version dropped, the crowd already knew every swell and drop.

Ninajirachi's Moment Is Now

For anyone who slept on I Love My Computer — Ninajirachi's debut album that landed on multiple best-of-2024 lists and earned her a spot among 2025's most-watched new artists — "WannaCry" is your corrective. It slots in effortlessly beside trance classics like "Better Off Alone," channeling that late-'90s euphoria through a thoroughly modern production lens. The track throbs with intent, all surging synths and crystalline emotional payoff.

The timing is also pointed: "WannaCry" arrives just ahead of Ninajirachi's Lollapalooza debut, a milestone that feels less like a career checkpoint and more like an inevitability. She's been building toward stages this size with every release.

The Meta Glasses Moment — and Who Else Noticed

Of course, Ninajirachi's recent run hasn't been without turbulence. A brief detour into soundtracking an advertisement for Meta's AI-equipped glasses drew some side-eye from fans who expect more from artists at the vanguard of thoughtful electronic music. It's the kind of brand entanglement that stings a little — and she's hardly alone in navigating that tension.

Lorde has been one of the most vocal critics of AI surveillance tech in the music world, making her feelings about those Meta glasses abundantly clear. She's also taken aim at AI's broader creep into the industry — calling out Spotify's AI song tools with characteristic bluntness and labeling the glasses outright "not sexy". The sentiment is becoming a rallying cry for artists who'd rather protect the creative ecosystem than monetize every corner of it.

'WannaCry' and What It Signals

"WannaCry" feels like a course correction and a statement rolled into one gleaming package. Where the Meta spot asked Ninajirachi to soundtrack a product, this collaboration asks her to be fully, gloriously herself — and the result is some of the most alive electronic music to drop this festival season. Robinson's fingerprints are subtle but present, his DNA woven into the architecture without ever overpowering Ninajirachi's distinct maximalist voice.

As summer festival lineups heat up and the dance music conversation grows louder, "WannaCry" positions Ninajirachi not as an emerging act but as a genuine force. Lollapalooza will be one more chance to prove it at volume.

LordeProfileLordeSinger & songwriter

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