Premiere: Hoirong’s ‘Nagraj Will Sort It All Out’ Video Brings Out Hand-Drawn Monsters

For a noise-rock and lo-fi punk-informed project, Hoirong understandably has a different fanbase on streaming platforms compared to more accessible pop-rock Indian bands. Still, the decade-old project by Bengaluru-based, Manipuri artist Kamal Singh (from the erstwhile rock act Lounge Piranha) has accrued over 5,000 Spotify streams for the song “Nagraj Will Sort It All Out” from their 2019 album Cow Gives Milk.

While Hoirong went on to release another album Hope & Light in 2020, Singh was drawing up an animated video for “Nagraj Will Sort It All Out.” Out now, Singh says he’d been drawing sketches of headbanging trees, cooked eggs and all kinds of monsters for about three years until finishing it last week. The vocalist, guitarist and producer in the band says he wasn’t putting together a video just because the song was becoming Hoirong’s most-streamed track on Spotify. “It just turned out that way,” he says.

Much like the hook of the riff-driven song – “But my intestine is a dying rotten cobra” – there’s really not much sense or cohesiveness that Singh was going for between the visuals and the lyrics. He says, “Visually, I was just trying to draw things of images that were coming to mind with those parts, but not necessarily in terms of lyrics. I thought it has to make sense somewhere, so words appear and it makes a connection as a lyric video.”

The video comes just short of a year since Hoirong gathered India’s left-field producers, punk-informed bands and more for the 2023 album The Reincarnation Of The Princess Of Woe And Her Vampire Hound Posse. Bands like Lo! Peninsula, Pacifist, The Jass B’stards and Runt joined artists Disco Puppet and February 31st to put their signature spin on songs from the 2013 debut Hoirong album, celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Hoirong is back to being a solo project after a few years of having band members involved, but Singh is keen on “putting something up in Bangalore” in terms of a gig and bandmates. Meanwhile, new music is on the way. “There is something I’ve been working on for a bit now. Hopefully September or October, I might put something out,” he adds. Singh’s other rock-meets-Manipuri-folklore project Ereimang – which had its debut with the song “Kwakta Lamjel” in 2023 – will also have their second single coming out later this year.  

Watch the video for “Nagraj Will Sort It All Out” below.