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.
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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 one 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.
Although many artists stumble upon their passion for music by accident, for Krishnan, it was a legacy in the making. The singer was only four when she began training in Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam. Her father loves classical tunes, her mother is a devotee of spiritual hymns and her keyboardist brother has never met a Sufi song he didn’t like. This love language was inseparable from her childhood and carried her to her artistic calling.
As a professional musician who moved away from her family home in Irvine to live in Los Angeles, Krishnan now harvests inspiration in the sanctity of her bedroom, the DIY studio in East Hollywood where she creates her craft. “I’m big on the vibe and energy of a space. I don’t function well with clutter,” she says, pointing at her wooden desk that holds space for a pair of speakers and a laptop but remains free of sentimental tchotchkes. Beside her desk sits a vintage Roland keyboard, the first instrument she learnt to play.
As someone who fell in love with music within the cosy confines of her home, Krishnan prefers the intimacy of familiar spaces over the glamour of a studio. “I’m a closet recorder,” she says. Before I can ask her what she means by that, the artist flips the camera to her wardrobe displaying neatly folded stacks of clothes, with enough room for just one person to step in. “All my music, except a few songs, has been recorded inside this closet. You don’t need fancy equipment, you just need a meaningful space where you can be comfortable and intentional.”
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This rootedness also extends to the artwork in Krishnan’s Los Angeles home. An intricate Tanjore painting of Lord Krishna hangs on a cream coloured wall facing another frame of two brown women gently braiding flowers into each other’s hair. In fact, braids are pivotal to the musician’s self-expression. During most live performances, she twists her big curls into a plait usually adorned by an oversized red scrunchie. “The look takes me back to my Bharatanatyam days,” Krishnan says, smiling. “We would wear jasmine flowers in our hair while performing on stage, so when I put the scrunchie around my braid, it feels like I’m part of a production.” Two years ago, in a quest to hold dance close, she also began taking hip-hop lessons and now smoothly inserts Bharatanatyam mudras into freestyle moves.
Krishnan’s desire to blend her South Asian core with mainstream American culture extends well beyond her music and into her lifestyle. She credits Sid Sriram, a musician who fuses Carnatic tunes with Western singing, for inspiring her. “When I saw this swagged-out guy in a snapback singing R&B and Carnatic music, I was like, ‘That’s me’,” she says. “That made me believe South Asians can incorporate all parts of ourselves—Carnatic music, Bharatanatyam, R&B and jazz. We can do it all.”
This story featuring Gayathri Krishnan appears in Vogue India’s July-August 2025 issue, now on stands. Subscribe here.
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