Vocalist Shohini Maitra Debuts Emotional Single ‘For You’

Raised in a Bengali family in Bengaluru, singer-songwriter Shohini Maitra constantly had music around her. “[It] has always kind of been a part of our culture,” she says. From Maitra’s parents pushing her towards music to her cousins introducing her to the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fleetwood Mac and AC/DC at a young age, the musician caught the bug early. She says, “In school, I started doing tiny competitions and I thought maybe this could be a thing.”

Over the last couple of years, Maitra has been playing plenty of cover gigs in Pune where she is currently based. After studying Music Performance at The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London last year, she realized that she was wasting time performing songs that she didn’t want to. “I decided enough of gigs, not doing that for a bit, let’s write.” Writing has now led to the musician’s emotional debut R&B/soul single, “For You.”

The new song, recorded at Pune’s Gray Spark Audio, features lush keyboard parts, elegant production and Maitra’s husky vocals. The track started to take shape after a meeting with her therapist as the vocalist sings, “Another session/Another pill.” Ask Maitra more about the song and she says, “I’m a very anxious person [and] I have a pattern that I leave people before they can leave me. I see it in my head almost as if I am doing a favor to them.” She adds, “Eventually I didn’t, I stayed back but that’s what anxiety is, it hits you and then you realize it was actually really pointless. When it’s happening it’s like the end of the world.”

“For You” was produced by Gray Spark Audio’s Nitin M Krishna and mastered by Ronak Runwal. Next, Maitra is working on putting out more singles which according to her are very different from her debut release and also wants to start performing her original material live more often. She says, “I’ve done all of these commercial gigs that it’s high time that I just focus on me and myself.”

Listen to “For You” below: