Known for her textured, intimate voice that immediately pulls listeners into a delicate, melodic world, singer-songwriter Anumita Nadesan adds vibrancy and radiance to her sonic palette with her debut album rang. This eight-track journey—with a title that means ‘colour’ in Hindi—showcases the artist’s soulful vocal melodies at the heart of each song. During the difficult days of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of listeners found solace in the music of Nadesan. Now, she brings her attentive audience in to another intimate story on rang—of how she fell in love for the first time. As she tells Apple Music: “It was beautiful and messy and everything in between. It didn’t go the way I wanted but it taught me a lot about myself and about people in general. I’m quite introverted—not the type who goes out much—so that whole phase felt like my own little character development arc.” Nadesan originally turned “a small collection of feelings” into 22 song ideas for the LP. However, with help from her best friend and mentor Paras Thakur (from rock mainstays The Local Train) in Himalayan resort town Manali, she honed it down to eight melodious tracks. Indie artists like Sudan, Janisht Joshi, Shams, Barbie Rajput and Abhyuday Thakur also offered their wisdom and musical support to the set. Songs like the groovy opening pair of “simti” and “ahista”, or the charming Tamil ditty “nee dhaan”, shine on this record. Nadesan describes each piece as a “snapshot of a feeling—a moment I didn’t want to lose” as she navigated themes of love, comfort, restlessness, heartbreak and acceptance. Below, she takes Apple Music through five of the album’s tracks and how they came to be. “simti” “You know that moment when you’re just playing around, not expecting anything serious and suddenly something magical clicks? I’d just come home after buying a Casio keyboard, all hyper and chirpy, just wanting to press random keys. Paras [Thakur] played this really nice groove and before we knew it, we had the verse to chorus done. It was so quick—we actually laughed about it later. I parked the song for a while and by the time I came back to it, I was in the middle of my breakup and singing about how amazing it feels to be in that rush. It’s funny to look back on it now.” “ahista” “You know those moments when you feel everything all at once? Anxious, giddy, restless but still find comfort in the mess? That’s ‘ahista’. I wrote it when I was feeling low, full of nervous jitters. The song you hear now, all happy and upbeat, is actually the opposite of how it began. By the next morning, I was back to my usual hyper self and the whole thing just took on a new light. Barbie’s words and Sudan’s production brought it to life. “I live in a small city [Thiruvanathapuram in Kerala] and often cycle through empty roads. When I had the demo ready, I’d listen to it on loop everywhere I went—my heart would race from excitement. That’s how the visuals for the video came to me. I didn’t want anything complicated. Just me being me. This song and the album gave me a lot of perspective. I wasn’t chasing anything any more—[I was] just trying to be present and alive.” “tum jo aaye” “Then comes that calm after the chaos—the part where you’re just content, no drama, no overthinking. That’s where ‘tum jo aaye’ came in. I started with this guitar riff and got stubborn about turning it into a song. But nothing fit, until one day it just did. You know that part in movies where the protagonist’s wife dies early on and every time they think of her, everything feels warm and perfect? That’s what I wanted this to feel like. Nostalgic but not heavy. A memory that makes you smile instead of cry.” “nee dhaan” “And then, of course, the itch begins. You know when everything’s fine—perfectly fine—and yet some part of you goes, ‘Okay, now what?’ I’d reached that stable, familiar space—exactly what I wanted—but that tiny one per cent of me that refuses to be logical woke up. I was grumpy and annoyed but also weirdly romantic about it. It’s that feeling of, ‘I know you’re doing great but how dare you not do this or that?’ Totally unreasonable but also kinda justified.” “aas paas” “You know that point where you’ve cried, processed and now you can actually smile about it? It’s bittersweet and heartbreaking but gentle. You say goodbye with a smile; no new demands, no new desires, just this quiet hope that they’re somewhere around. ‘aas paas’ was actually the first song I finished. I wanted to put it out as a single because that’s what everyone around me was suggesting. But it felt incomplete, like I still had more to say. Now it feels like the perfect full stop to the whole thing. A little ironic—but that’s what makes it special.”