Singer Dhvani Bhanushali may not have been married when she penned her Lagan EP but she nevertheless wanted to craft a collection of mesmerising wedding songs. The Indian pop artist, known for her work on many beloved film soundtracks, tells Apple Music that the ideas of family bonds, love and marriage have always been important concepts for her. And this shows as the driving force behind the record, from the music and the mood to the lyrics themselves, is indeed union between two people. “We as Indians,” she says, “are always focused on community and family. So I really wanted to say that in my first EP.” Working with singer-composer Abhijit Vaghani and lyricist Shloke Lal, Bhanushali centres Lagan around love and wedding songs—but it’s clear that there’s always a bigger meaning to each track. The singer says: “Lagan also means ‘connection’ in Hindi and in Gujarati it means ‘marriage’.” Songs like “Khushnaseebi” lend themselves to talking about gratitude, not just in the context of being married but also feeling thankful for friends and dear ones. Over the course of its five songs, the record journeys in and out of different stages of togetherness, while sonically venturing into club-friendly pop (“Jadoo” with singer Ash King) and acoustic ballad territory (“Masoomiyat”). Here, Bhanushali takes us through the guiding principles and musical moments behind Lagan, track by track. “Preet” “One fine day, [my music team and I] were feeling quite unmotivated and we’d just had lunch and were like, ‘Oh no.’ We spent two hours [working on songs] and eventually came to the conclusion that it wasn’t working today. Suddenly, the pianist comes in and plays a few chords and Abhijit starts humming a melody and I say: ‘This is really good! Please complete it.’ I kid you not, Shloke wrote lines just in that moment and we were almost teary-eyed. I feel like it’s my favourite song on the EP. It’s really special because when you hear it, you think about the person you’re head over heels in love with.” “Masoomiyat” “This was the second song we made. It was based on this guitar loop that we created while writing the song. In it, I wanted to talk about how I view someone’s honesty or innocence when I first interact with them, irrespective of falling in love with them. That’s very important for me. Like, how real you are. How organic you are as a person. Shloke said that we should talk about ‘masoomiyat’, which means ‘innocence’ in Hindi. This is actually the introduction to Lagan, story-wise. It’s about the first interaction. The first feeling you get when you first meet a person. It uses acoustic guitar but in the end there’s one traditional touch that comes in with the nadaswaram [a double-reed wind instrument]. It sounded magical.” “Shagun” “We were always clear that we wanted one lagan geet [wedding song] for sure, because the EP was called Lagan. Being a Gujarati myself, I really wanted a song like that. I think we achieved a good deal by having the traditional elements intact, with the shehnai [a double-reed conical instrument] and Gujarati sections coming in and supporting the Hindi portions. Abhijit’s assistant was just there when we were making it and she had tears in her eyes. She was like, ‘It’s so emotional!’ It was really endearing to hear that. We went pretty emotional with the lyrics. The whole thing has vows about creating a world together and how living together is going to be really amazing.” “Jadoo” “The soundscape of Lagan is traditional yet modern. I say this is because I’m a girl who really values tradition but I’m also from Bombay, so I’m modern as well. On ‘Jadoo’, things change. It’s all about the beat and it’s all about this one thought that there’s magic in us together. I always kept saying this and then I thought, ‘Why not make it a song?’ I feel like whenever two people are together, it’s almost like magic. You want to talk to each other every day. You want to be with each other all the time. We wanted to give it this spunk and that’s where Ash [King] comes in. I wanted it to be a kind of sequel to [2021 song] ‘Mera Yaar’. It’s saying: ‘Become my yaar [friend] and there’s magic in us together.’” “Khushnaseebi” “I feel like I always want to be grateful about things in life. And you should always be grateful about your relationships. We wanted to conclude Lagan with this feeling. You can dedicate it to anybody. You can just dedicate it to yourself and be like, ‘Dude, I’m grateful for me!’ We wanted to keep it simple and sonically bring in this new African genre, amapiano. Abhijit was discovering that whole genre and making me listen to it. I was a bit sceptical at first because we hadn’t heard much of it and there are very few artists who are doing it [outside of Africa], especially in India. We had to bring a bit of Bollywood into it and I think both worlds blend so well.”