Sheherazaad Announces Debut LP KHUDGARZI Via Erased Tapes
Vincent Moon directed the a capella video for lead single Andhera, which translates to Darkness.
Sheherazaad has announced that her debut album Khudgarzi will be released on November 20th via Erased Tapes, sharing its haunting first single 'Andhera' (translation: 'Darkness') as a preview.
While at work on Khudgarzi—the follow-up to 2024's globally acclaimed Qasr EP (produced by Arooj Aftab)—Sheherazaad found herself obsessed with the plight of the so-called Khudgarz Aurat ('The Selfish Woman'), whose desire for agency was often met with an awful end. 'I was made to fear a 'selfish' kind of woman–embracing her felt like stepping into a forbidden forest I'd been running away from,' she reflects. Sheherazaad explores this space with twisted imagination and profound depth on Khudgarzi (which translates from Urdu to selfishness). Across the spellbinding 10-track collection, she invokes the 'Selfish Women,' seeking their felt presence through fantastical allegory and world-building. The resulting characters of Khudgarzi shapeshift between storytellers, courtesans, historians, survivors, and witnesses.
'Andhera' is a Bolly-goth pop hymn that follows a vilified lover as she ushers in cosmic darkness, transmuting heartbreak into something vast and mythical. 'I wrote 'Andhera' after I'd met the love of my life, where for some reason, romantic gloom and obscurity was still bleeding out of me,' Sheherazaad explains. 'The song was largely composed in an ex's coat closet as I tried to keep my volume down lest I interrupted what I felt was his 'real' work outside. So I'd sing at the rock bottom of my vocal range, praising feminine darkness and the ancient murky cosmos. It became a frilly goth anthem, with eyeliner running down its cheeks, where the beloved is essentially just the color black.' The song arrives with an intimate a capella live performance video, captured by French filmmaker Vincent Moon in his renowned La Blogothèque-fashion in Victoria Park, London. Khudgarzi is now available for pre-order/pre-save at https://idol-io.ffm.to/khudgarzi.
Sheherazaad's cinematic blend of dystopic folk-noir and experimental pop laced with South Asian musical sensibilities has established her as one of the most distinctive new voices in contemporary music. Raised in California in a second-generation immigrant household, and now dividing her time between India and Brooklyn, her richly poetic songwriting explores broken tongues and questions of belonging through immersive, genre-defying soundscapes. Khudgarzi was entirely self-produced and recorded between Brooklyn, London, and the San Francisco Bay Area (with fragments arriving from Istanbul, Islamabad, and Trivandrum, among others). Mostly sung in Urdu (with passages in English and Tamil), the album's linguistic choices reflect split identities, colonial legacies, and a feeling of unbelonging. Musically, Khudgarzi expands the wilderness of Sheherazaad's Signature Sound, where instruments from Hindustani, Turkish, Arabic and Carnatic traditions–including tanbur, santoor, veena, rabab, ghatam and gungaroo–intertwine with weather recordings, breath, echoes, moans, and the sounds of the animal world.
Written in the wake of a broken engagement, the emotional undertow of Khudgarzi was shaped by personal rupture and carries debris of rage and guilt. Across the epic anthology, Sheherazaad refuses neat resolutions, and instead depicts feminine survival as a complex exercise in strategy, performance, and adaptation. Each song on the album unleashes its own self-contained world and is narrated by a rotating cast of eccentric female characters–from a temptress plagued with a homicidal addiction, to sex workers, shunned lovers and songstresses. Listeners slowly come to understand the narrators of each track as quiet orchestrators of feminine resistance.
Despite its thematic density, Khudgarzi is marked by the spaciousness of a night sky. Pregnant pauses and brooding silences waft through mythical lyricism and natural breath. 'So much music feels like an assault to me,' Sheherazaad admits. 'I want to open a gentle rupture, where a listener may truly sit with herself.' A lush ecosystem of 30+ genre-chaotic musicians–including Ria Modak (guitar), Sarathy Korwar (tabla, additional vocals), Jay Chakravorty (synths), Shunya (double bass, cello, violin, guitar), and Qasim Naqvi (additional string arrangement)–merge together on the record. Sheherazaad longingly invites other emerging South Asian femme voices like Irfana and Daatri Dadhich to rise alongside her as sympathetic co-narrators. 'We were taught there could be only one of us at the table,' says Sheherazaad, adding, 'There were ample milestones of togetherness and generosity to be shared.'
On Khudgarzi, selfishness is neither villain nor virtue. It is an instinct–a reclamation. By refusing resolution, the album leaves space for the listener's own negotiations with selfhood versus sacrifice.
Khudgarzi LP Tracklist
1. Qatil (Murderess)
2. Pakeezah (Pure One)
3. Registaan (Desert)
4. Gulukara (Songstress)
5. Mard (Man)
6. Haqeeqat (Reality)
7. Andhera (Darkness)
8. Zeher (Poison)
9. Kohinoor (Diamond)
10. Haqeeqat || (Reality ||)
Sheherazaad Live Dates
08/30 - Kelmarsh, UK - Shambala Festival
09/06 - Larmer Tree Gardens, UK - End of the Road Festival
12/03-07 - Pattaya, TH - Wonderfruit Festival
01/20 - Liverpool, UK - Royal Philharmonic
01/22 - Edinburgh, UK - Sneaky Pete's
01/23 - Glasgow, UK - Glad Cafe (Celtic Connections)
01/25 - Bristol, UK - The Lantern
01/27 - London, UK - Cafe Oto
01/28 - Margate, UK - Arc
01/30 - Fribourg, CH - Fri-Son
02/01 - Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso
02/02 - Antwerp, BE - De Roma
02/03 - Utrecht, NL - Tivoli
02/06 - Berlin, DE - Supermolly
02/07 - Jena, DE - Trafo
02/08 - Prague, CZ - Palac Akropolis
02/11 - Porto, PT - RCA
02/12 - Braga, PT - TBA
02/13 - Lisbon, PT - ZBD
Photo Credit: Zayira Ray
Photo Credit: Zayira Ray
