Nikhil D’Souza says he “struggled” to decide what to call his second Hindi EP, which follows up 2020’s Waqt. “The easiest thing would have been to name it after one of the tracks,” says the singer-songwriter, “but that sometimes is a little lazy.” The artist eventually opted for Leher—which means “wave”—because the songs capture “the ups and downs” of relationships. “I spent a lot of time sitting with the songs, trying to understand what ties them together,” says D’Souza, who enlisted frequent collaborator Pinky Poonawala to write the lyrics. “What would strike anyone who listens to the EP is the dynamic between them—some are really rocky and out there, and some are inward and introspective.” For instance, while the power ballad “Dobara”, which opens the collection, is about “giving yourself a second chance and preparing yourself before you can bring someone else into your life”, the EP’s closer, “Socho”, is a stripped-down love song about “being dragged down by your past and unable to make space” for another person. There’s also a new sonic dynamic at play here. Unlike Waqt, which D’Souza recorded by himself, Leher features the group of instrumentalists with whom he performs both his Bollywood and indie music concerts: drummer Mitchell Murray, bassist Nathan Thomas, guitarist Zohran Miranda and keyboardist Brent Tauro. “I really wanted to get a live feel,” says D’Souza, who adds that he “loves the process” of going into the studio and playing a song through “until you find the right vibe for it”. The result is an EP that gives his music a fuller sound while retaining the intimacy with which he’s long been associated. Here, he takes Apple Music through the making of Leher, track by track. “Dobara” “When I have an idea I want to flesh out, I meet Pinky. I wanted to write something about butterflies and their metamorphosis. The verses are subdued and the chorus is this big explosion and expression of freedom brought about by that change. It has a late 1990s or early 2000s rock vibe. That was when I really absorbed a lot of influences—[acts such as] Jeff Buckley and Radiohead. Those things are bound to come through. That’s what I love and want to present when I’m on stage.” “Muskaan” “I had met someone by the name Muskaan who had the most beautiful smile. When I saw her posts on social media, there was a real sadness behind them. I told Pinky about how you could meet someone who’s radiant but deep down, they’re suffering—and how what you see is not exactly what is. From there, the story evolved into the space where you’re meeting someone after many years and you remember them as one thing but they seem to have changed over time. Then the deeper questions to be asked—that you realise later on in the song—are: ‘Have they really changed that much, or have I? Do I see the world through a different lens now?’” “Tu Keh De Haan” “I first produced this in a much more mellow way, like a Norah Jones tune. The mellowness wasn’t working with the lyrics, which say things like: ‘I’ll build a home for you on the moon, I’ll pull down the stars for you.’ The almost punk-rock zone [that the song’s in] came to me a little before we stepped into the studio, on my way there. We played it through like that and it just felt like, yeah, this is where the song wants to live.” “Besabar” “In this song, I’m talking about a person who used to really like me at one time and how suddenly the tables have turned, and I’m feeling the world for this person now and I don’t know whether they still feel the same way. For this one, I brought in a 12-string acoustic guitar [to play] the riff in the beginning. I [found out] that in the 1960s and ’70s, a lot of Bollywood composers used 12-string guitars and it was quite a signature sound.” “Socho (Acoustic)” “We had recorded a demo of this acoustic version of [2023 single] ‘Socho’ as a B-side, which we didn’t end up releasing. I completed it on my own a couple of months later and sent it to a few friends of mine, who preferred it to the original. They were like: ‘This is more you.’ When I was writing ‘Socho’, this was the way I was hearing it and then we bumped it up, saying: ‘If it has to be a single, it needs to be a little bigger.’ I want people to listen to this because this is the way the song started out.”