Siddharth Basrur and Arrows Team Up for Surging New Song ‘Buried to Dust’

Amongst Indian indie’s most full-throated and distinct voices, Siddharth Basrur takes on production and vocal duties for collaborative project Arrows’ poignant track “Buried to Dust.”

Arrows is helmed by guitarist, bassist, songwriter and Rolling Stone India staff writer David Britto, who started it up in 2018 and released his debut single “Spaces” in 2019 with singer-songwriter Vernon Noronha. Britto says he was keen to seek Basrur out for a collaboration and did it on the recommendation of sound engineer Ayan De. “In December 2020 I saw Basrur put out a post on social media saying he’d be up for producing for people, so I thought here’s my chance. Having known Sid for a couple of years made it easy for me to approach him, and so I sent him an acoustic demo I had, he liked it and we got working,” Britto says.

Basrur gets as hands-on as possible with “Buried to Dust,” which adapts a poem written by Britto’s friend Denver Cardoz, delving on loss and death. The five-minute track took shape over the span of two weeks, with Basrur bringing a lot of his gear over to Britto’s house for recording. “The sessions were a lot of fun, we’d work out parts, record, go out for coffee and he would even stay back for dinner some nights. So what started out as just a collab ended up becoming quite a friendship.”

Another friend that Britto called upon was Kristofor Mendonca, drummer of pop-rock band The Mavyns and cover band The Vindaloos. Mendonca plays a protagonist of sorts, mired in thoughts and venting his frustrations through air-drumming and graceful choreography. A self-acknowledged fan of The Mavyns, Britto says Mendonca was the first name that came to mind for the music video directed and edited by Blake D’Silva. “He [Mendonca] has got such character and talent and he’s also fun to be around and work with. I didn’t do any casting, it was more like, ‘Hey Kris would you be up for doing this?’ and he immediately said yes,” Britto says.

A collaborative project throughout, Arrows’ next material includes an acoustic-rock song called “To Your World” and a dreamier track called “Wish You The Best.” “I don’t want to put timelines on them cause you never know what’s going to happen next,” Britto says with a laugh.

Watch the video for “Buried To Dust” below. Stream on more platforms here.