Swiss Musician Veronica Fusaro Talks India Debut and New EP

Last month we spoke to Swiss singer-songwriter Veronica Fusaro ahead of the release of her third record, the five-track Sunkissed EP. Fusaro announced at the time that she was plotting her India debut with Mumbai label 9122 Records. With the EP out earlier this month, Fusaro made her way to our shores to promote it performing intimate shows in Mumbai and Bengaluru as well as doing radio spots this past week.

We caught Fusaro’s set at Mumbai venue G5A where she performed solo, armed with just her guitar. On her experience of playing in India for the first time, she says, “It was very nice, I felt very welcomed. I really appreciated that. There was even a person who told me he drove 20 kilometers to get here and he was listening to my music for a while and it’s crazy getting to meet people who have been commenting on pictures.”

Apart from Sunkissed, 22-year-old Fusaro has two more records to her name, Lost In Thought (2017) and ICE COLD (2018). Ask her how she works at such a fast pace and she says, “Music is something I always do. Like whenever I am traveling, it might just be a sentence that comes to my mind or a melody. I record it on my phone and when I get back home I get to go to the studio and I get to work on that sentence and maybe it turns into a song.” She adds, “So I guess the inspiration is always there and the will to write new music so I guess that’s why I have material.”

Fusaro tells us that she started to put the new record together at the beginning of the year. The EP opens with the saccharine “Rollercoaster” where the musician sings the clever lyric “Rollercoaster/coaster roller.” She says, “This song is about that classic love-hate relationship.” The poignant “Lie To Me” was written after a Friday night out with friends and “it felt kind of dull, it was an escape from everyday life and it didn’t feel too right. So I was like, ‘lie to me’ make me feel something.”

The EP moves onto the emotional “Hello Old Friend” which is about seeing a person you knew extremely well but don’t anymore. The groovy “Run My Mind” is a song “you just need to close your eyes and imagine you’re driving through a desert and escaping from the police or maybe your boss [laughs].” The record closes with the relaxed “All I Ever Wanted” which according to Fusaro is “a confession.” She adds, “It’s that realization of really liking someone and never able to say it. And now it’s too late to say it so it sucks, but yeah.”

2019 has been quite an eventful year for the singer-songwriter; she’s not only put out new music but has toured across the world including a set at U.K. music festival Glastonbury. “I was on a stage called The Rabbit Hole it was between two main stages, The Park Stage and The Other Stage. It was in a tent so people were passing by and stopping. It was very cool actually,” she says. It doesn’t stop there for the young Swiss artist, she’s even opened for legendary British musician Mark Knopfler in France and also supported Swedish artist Eagle-Eye Cherry for his own France tour.

Fusaro says, “He [Knopfler] was telling me about his daughter and his family and how I was doing and how I was proceeding and everything. He’s very much a down to earth guy and he doesn’t need to prove anything obviously, he’s Mark Knofler! On sharing the stage with Cherry, the singer-songwriter says, “The Eagle-Eye Cherry crew, the band, himself, were great. It was fun being surrounded by cool nice people.”

Next, Fusaro has a show with her band in Basil this weekend and has plans to head back into the studio to work on new material. She says, “I have some songs that are not released yet, I have some that have yet to be finished writing. So there’s for sure going to be more music. But the touring is really the thing going on at the moment.”

Stream ‘Sunkissed’ on Spotify below and click here to listen to it on other platforms.