From jazz to North Indian classical, devotional Sufi compositions and even reggae, Pakistani American singer Arooj Aftab has the kind of voice that arrests the listener and envelops each genre it chooses to tackle. Releasing her debut album, Bird Under Water, in 2014, Aftab fused atmospheric acoustic jazz instrumentation with the centuries-old tradition of qawwali music that she had listened to as a teenager. Her 2018 follow-up, Siren Islands, then experimented with modular synthesisers to create an ambient soundscape punctuated by Urdu lyricism. Throughout, Aftab’s breathy and quietly powerful voice is the unifier—a motif that ultimately earned her a Grammy Award for Best Global Music Performance in 2022. The winning number, “Mohabbat”, was taken from her third album, Vulture Prince—a deeply felt exploration of Urdu verse paired with harp and violin. Stepping away from the up-tempo bombast of bhangra, Aftab’s output breathes new life into the meditative essence of North Indian classical and devotional music. It’s an intuitively thoughtful approach that promises to always enthral.