Noush! does it all

Anoushka Sivasankar, aka Noush!, released her fifth single, Snakes and Ladders this month. Pic/Savio Gerhart

When Anoushka Sivasankar, better known as Noush!, talks about making music, she doesn't separate the song from everything that surrounds it.

She thinks of the visuals, styling, colours, and the mood from the get-go.

"I'm chasing the emotion more than anything else," she tells us, "I don't look at making music, producing or creative direction as separate jobs. I just feel like they are just one different avenue telling the same story."

That philosophy runs through Snakes and Ladders, her fifth single, released earlier this month.

While the track was co-produced with Ramon Ibrahim, Noush! also steered its creative vision, working closely with director Aditi Sivaraman and choreographer Chinmayee to shape a music video that leans unapologetically into the melodrama of Indian soap operas and Latin pop.

The result feels less like a standalone single and more like stepping into a universe. Perhaps that's because, to Noush!, every release belongs to one. "My whole ideology as an artiste is that every song has its own frequency," she says, "It's the creative world of Noush! FM. Come tune in, you might find your station."

A still from the music video

Ask any independent musician what happens after they have finished writing a song, and the answer is usually another list of jobs. There are Reels to plan, artwork to approve, teasers to edit, and an audience to keep engaged online. For artistes building careers outside the traditional label system, visibility has become almost as important as the music itself.

"I think we have to now look at ourselves as brands altogether where music is obviously still the centre of it," she says, "I would be lying if I said that it's just about releasing music, because I think everything now has become an experience that we have to give."

The shift, she believes, has everything to do with how people consume music today. "Even if you're scrolling through Reels on mute, it's the visual that then serves as a hook."

That doesn't mean she's chasing trends for the sake of them. If anything, Snakes and Ladders became an exercise in doing exactly what felt authentic. Every styling decision, every visual choice and every promotional image came from the same place. "This was me not holding back. That became the strategy. I was as Noush! as I can be."

Noush! laughs while recalling the making of the Snakes and Ladders video because, for months, it genuinely felt like the title had taken over real life - every breakthrough seemed to be followed by another setback. "I feel like one day I'm climbing up a ladder, the next day I'm bitten by a snake and I'm back to square one."

Finding the right collaborators proved unexpectedly difficult. Even the shoot had its own share of drama. Equipment stopped working. The team started late. Scenes had to be dropped. An improvised infomercial sequence, stitched together using B-roll footage, eventually made it into the final cut. Looking back, she laughs about it now. At the time, it was anything but funny.

"For all my songs so far, I was just working all by myself. The first thing Snakes and Ladders taught me was that it's okay to ask for help when you need it because I think collaboration makes a foundation grow stronger," she says.

The inspiration for Snakes and Ladders arrived unexpectedly after hearing the phrase, it takes two to tango. A personal relationship became the metaphor for a board game where progress and setbacks arrive with equal unpredictability.

"It takes two to tango," she says, "So you don't have to hold on to so much guilt and so much blame for somebody else's actions or somebody else's free will."

Yet she no longer sees the song as entirely hers. "I always say this. My music is for you to make yours."

Friends have interpreted it through friendships rather than romance. Listeners she has never met have sent messages saying they found themselves in the lyrics. "I had friends calling me and saying, ‘I found a friend in this song because I felt like it was a very liberating experience'."

As she prepares to release more music this year, every track will inhabit a different emotional frequency within Noush! FM. The genres may change. The way she approaches them probably won't.

After all, whether it's writing, producing, creative directing, or dreaming up an entirely new world, Noush! still sees it as all as one job. Or as she says, "It's just another way of telling the same story."