Empowerment has often been at the heart of Vidya Vox’s music since she launched her career in 2015. Over the past decade, the singer-songwriter—who was born in Chennai but raised in the US—hasn’t been afraid to craft strong, heartfelt messages around themes of inner strength and women’s liberty. However, her 2024 EP Sundari goes deeper than any of her previous records. Over six tracks that draw musical influences from 20th-century Bollywood, Tamil Nadu classical folk traditions and South Asian pop and hip-hop, Sundari champions resilience and the power of femininity, while also touching on high hopes, love and celebration—other subjects that Vox has focused on in her music. However, at the heart of the record is a tough personal story from the artist’s early years. Vox (also known as Vidya Iyer) says she grew up with an abusive father before her mother left him and raised her two daughters on her own. It wasn’t an easy part of the singer’s life, and she doesn’t hold back when recounting her stories of strength and tenacity, particularly in terms of her superhero mother. She tells Apple Music: “I finally feel like I’m in a place where I can talk about some of the things that I’ve gone through.” Sundari—which means “beauty” in Tamil—is hardly an angry, sad or dark EP. If anything, beauty and power flow through every track as Vox’s voice lilts and soars over melodies that tell of the collective and individual strength of women. Working with producer Shankar Tucker and lyricist Madhan Karky, she has crafted a record that brings in a range of styles, instruments and influences. Vox was once a creator of mash-up tracks, but over the years she’s developed her own distinct style, with defining moments including her 2017 breakthrough song “Kuthu Fire” and 2020 hit “Thalaivi”. She’s built on her Indian classical vocal training, adding depth to her music along the way, as well as including some American pop sensibilities. Often asked why her songs are chiefly about women’s freedom, she now has a definitive answer with Sundari, which took her a few years to put together. “It wasn’t something that happened overnight,” she says. “But I finally feel like I’m here and I’m able to share that story.” From the sprawling opener “Stardust” to the sultry “Dangerous” with singer Nikhita Gandhi and the fantastical “Yazhiha” with vocalist Rohith Jayaraman, Sundari runs the gamut from intense self-reflection to full-on party time. Below, Vox takes Apple Music through the EP, track by track. “Stardust” “‘Stardust’ is a track that I composed first and then the instrumentation came later. I just composed it on piano and Shankar [Tucker] took it and made it into this huge cinematic track. I wanted to sing in Tamil and Malayalam for most of this EP because it’s my mother tongue and the songs are inspired by my mom. Madhan [Karky] had written a piece about self-love and stardust. I thought it was such an interesting concept. I kind of chose the lines I thought were most appropriate. We’re always singing about romance—and there’s a lot about romantic love on this EP as well—but we don’t sing about self-love that much. Some of the lyrics translate from Tamil and say: ‘Whenever I find a dusty surface, I'll write my name. Wherever my eyes wander, if I find a mirror, I’ll smile upon my own reflection.’ We’re always comparing ourselves to other people and sometimes that can be a thief of joy. Sometimes it’s healthy competition but we’re all unique. It goes like that.” “Sundari” “I imagined this big party with aunties in their saris [and then I imagined] Tamil percussion and a little bit of Afropop beat. I don’t know if I’ve fully heard that before. I’ve used Tamil percussion a lot in previous songs like ‘Thalaivi’ so I wanted to bring that in here, like the [percussion instrument] thappattai. It’s just imagining a street full of people dancing and I marry that with Afropop music. Everything sounds kind of vinyl-y. Shankar recorded it on tape and then recorded it back into [digital music-making tool] Ableton. It’s inspired by summers in Chennai, where everything is a little sweaty but it’s also sizzling and great. It’s a hot song. She’s out on the town and figuring out who she is.” “Ini Ninte Lokam (Go Off)” “There’s an intentional order here, in that ‘Stardust’ is a self-reflection, self-love thing and ‘Sundari’ is how I’m having a good time and beckoning people. This is a Malayalam song, but it starts with a small snippet of ‘Go off, go off’—it’s like you’re discovering who you are while you’re on your journey. It’s this feeling of ‘let’s go!’, but then I wanted it to sound polite and also have energy. I reached out to Seetha [Jayaraman, lyricist] since she worked with me on [2023 track] ‘Shubha Mangalyam’ and I wanted this to be a complete women’s empowerment song. ‘Ini Ninte Lokam’ means ‘this is your world’. Your journey has no limits, so go find who you are.” “Dangerous” “I wrote this song with Shankar in 2022. Earlier that year, Nikhita [Gandhi] had come to LA in the summer. I wrote the first verse and I had a second verse but felt like it was missing something. I just wanted someone else to sing on it as well. I thought of Nikhita because she has an incredible energy and her vocal timbre is so unique. Shankar collaborated with Nikhita many years ago on his album, so we have a good rapport. We brought her into the studio and she literally wrote the verse in half an hour, I want to say. “It just felt like an unapologetic bop. I feel like sometimes we’re taking up less space in the world as women, especially as South Asian, as brown women in predominantly American and white societies. This is a song about taking up more space. There’s a Rajasthani-style sample in the beginning. We already had it and thought it would be perfect to go with a hip-hop beat. The production is very sparse because I wanted the vocals to shine. I’m doing this very low, raspy rap voice. I haven’t really rapped that much before. I’m not super comfortable with it but I also wanted to add my own quality.” “Champagne Roses” “This was the first song we wrote for the EP. It’s a little bit of an ode to our older songs—there’s a lot of layers and instrumentations. I wanted it to have a North Indian-style sample because I’ve used a lot of South Indian samples. It’s fully inspired by a friend’s mehndi [pre-wedding] party, where all the women were in these lehengas [Indian dresses]. I knew all the women personally and they’re all incredible in their own right. I wanted to capture the spirit of royalty a little bit and say that we’re all queens in our own communities. It set the tone for the rest of the record. I was also thinking about my mom there and I was like, ‘Oh, my mom is not royal in the sense of, like, sitting on a throne’—but I feel like royalty is so personal and it comes in so many different forms. It has a little bit of hip-hop and a bassline. I’m mainly singing in English and I’m rapping a little bit in the second verse.” “Yazhiha” “We composed the melody for this and I told Madhan I wanted Apsara—the self-realised celestial nymph—in the lyrics and for the song to reflect how she’s a force to be reckoned with. From there, I think we felt it needed a more Carnatic touch. Rohith [Jayaraman] came to mind because I’ve been a fan of his for ages and I wanted a song for us to collaborate on. It’s also very different from the stuff he’s done in the past. ‘Yazhiha’ is essentially a word for Apsara but it’s rare, and Madhan likes to write kind of rare words. Even I had to ask him [what it meant]. “I thought it was interesting to have a male vocalist on this because it was singing about women. It’s a symbol of how men also have to be companions in this journey of freedom, liberation and women having equal things in society. I think men have half a part to play in it too. I didn’t have male figures in my house growing up. My dad was against all these kinds of ideas. Having Rohith sing that part and talk about how powerful women are and how powerful Yazhiha is would be cathartic. It has so many layers to it.”