Note of confidence

It’s not just her songs that fuse Carnatic music with soulful R&B; Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Gayathri Krishnan’s entire life—her home, her workspace, her wardrobe—is a reflection of her hyphenated identity.

- DARSHITA GOYAL

BACK IN EIGHTH grade, when most kids’ notebooks were filled with sneaky games of Flames and tic-tac-toe, Gayathri Krishnan scribbled a dream for the future. “I want to go to Berklee College of Music,” her prophecy read. In her senior year of high school, she got a tattoo of a guitar to manifest this vision. Three years later, that’s exactly what she did.

Today, that dream has whizzed well past Berklee. Released in 2020, the South Asian singer-songwriter’s first EP, Create to Express, amassed six million streams—a rare feat for an independent artist. Not someone to be relegated to one-hit wonder status, the 25-year-old has been putting in the work: her latest single and TikTok earworm, “Made It”, is proof. Like many R&B tunes, the track begins with a groovy, sensual lilt, reeling you in with familiar blues notes.

But just as you settle in, Krishnan segues into a mesmerising sequence of Carnatic swarams (notes) that turn your curiosity about her into admiration.