In anticipation of her debut performance this Sunday at the True/False Film Festival’s Buskers Last Stand event, I had a chance to speak with Pasha Raghu, the artist behind the new project “heliophilia (garden of earthly delights).”As an eclectic mix of modern indie, ’90s-era inspiration, and shoegaze-dream pop fusion, heliophilia combines heavy tones with shining warmth. Despite being only sixteen years old, Pasha has years of experience under her belt as a singer, musician, and artist. We began the discussion with her inspirations for this project, her musical upbringing, and the influential experiences that shaped her as an artist.
Q: What was your musical background like?
A: I’ve always been into music. My family we’ve been going to concerts since my brothers and I were small. It’s fun entertainment, but you also get to see really good music. I think my first concert, I was two. I don’t remember that one, obviously, but the first music that I wanted to make was more pop-based, like Lorde or something like that. I remember a lot of projects that I did in elementary school, they’d be like, “What impact do you want to have on the world?” And I’d be like, “I want to make songs about important world issues and sing them on stage.” And then I got interested in more rock music, with guitars.
Q: Were there any specific artists, albums, or songs that revolutionized who you are as an artist?
A: Snail Mail is an artist I’ve been listening to since I was really small. We saw her in like 2017, 2018, and at that point I was obsessed with her. I know she started when she was 16, so I thought she was such a good influence. I saw that and I was like, I want to be like her when I grow up. But when I was in early elementary school I didn’t
know how to make music, but once I started playing guitar and bass more, I could start writing songs like her.
Q: So you saw Snail Mail in 2017– how old were you then?
A: I think I was eight. Yeah– and Lindsey, the singer in Snail Mail, I think she’s like 5′ 2”, and I thought she was so tall when we saw her. We took a picture with her and everything after the show, and I just thought that was so crazy, how I listen to her every single day– and now I get to see her on stage.
Q: You go to a lot of shows– are there any really memorable shows that inspired you?
A: Yeah. The first song that I actually remembered from a show I went to really young was an American football show. I can’t remember what it’s called, but I remember the lyrics and the chorus of it. Those always go through my head. That was like the moment that I realized, like, how music actually works. Before, I don’t even know what I thought. But I didn’t understand. I would always see their fingers moving, like when musicians play guitar, and I never understood. Like, why are they plucking these strings? Like, what does that do? And then I finally realized, oh. That was a moment.
Q: What main artists inspired you for heliophilia specifically?
A: For this project, I’m focusing on bands with female leads because I feel like in the scene right now, there aren’t enough rock bands with girls in them. And if there are girls, then they’re not usually the main person. They’re kind of just in the back, and then the dudes in the front are like screaming or something. But, yeah, heliophilia is inspired by 90’s female-led bands. The thing I also like about them is they’re very poppy, while also being rock.
Q: What’s your writing and recording process like?
A: Just to get the songs down, I use GarageBand. It’s such an easy platform– you don’t even have to use a laptop. You can just do it on an iPad or a phone. I’ll just be sitting on my counter for hours with my AirPods and my iPad, being a screenager, just recording a drum machine, and then recording guitar and bass and vocals and stuff. It sounds very indie, DIY. I just kind of want to get the songs out there. I think, warping, I recorded it on a voice memo.
Q: Do you always use a drum machine when you record?
A: It depends, yeah. I’m not actually a drummer, really, because I just haven’t practiced. My brother and I would practice when we were really small, and we’d do Korn and Slayer covers and stuff. I’d be like banging on the drums, at like ten years old. But yeah, I really want to learn drums. I usually just record a drum machine and then tell my brother, “Sury, like, can you play drums that sound like this?” And then show him like a song that I want it to sound like. I really want to learn, though.
Q: When you’re writing lyrics, do you usually follow one overarching story or combine many different ideas?
A: For that song [warpig], I had a guitar part that I thought was really good. I kind of just wrote what I thought were random lyrics, and I had no clue what warpig meant. I was like, he’s a warpig. He’s going to take us down. I guess I was thinking of just some big, beefy guy. And I wasn’t even thinking of anyone in particular, but I just wrote that. A lot of my songs, I’ll just write last-minute lyrics on top of the guitar part. I also have, I haven’t been doing it recently, but I have a lyric book where I write lyrics down. Sometimes, for some of the demo songs, I just took lyrics from songs that I had written like two years ago. I had no clue what they meant– they were just about the most random stuff. And I would, I would just think it was so weird– but I would use them anyway.
Q: So, you have “warpig” out on Spotify, but on YouTube you have “five to realize,” and the “princess and the pea’s demos,” which are fourteen amazing songs all written and recorded. Do you plan on releasing any of those demos to Spotify or other platforms?
A: Yeah, I put them on YouTube just to get them out there. I also made some CDs for my family and then my friends for Christmas with the songs on them. But yeah, I think some of them I’ll release, like re-record them and then release them. But for a lot of them, I like how they’re just moments in time. So you hear it and then I can be like, oh, I made this like, yeah, during the summer when I wasn’t hanging out with anyone. I was just sitting by myself. So, I kind of like how they’re very raw– it’s what I was thinking at the moment when I made it.
Q: Do you take any inspiration from things not specifically musical– like physical art, fashion, or media?
A: Yeah. A lot of my inspiration does come from fashion; my favorite bands have really good style, and I always admire them. These boots that I just bought, they’re Doc Martens, like these tall black boots, and I got them because of one of my favorite bands, Momma. Their lead singer has these really tall boots. So yeah, a lot of fashion inspires what I make, just because of all the patterns and textures. Also, since I write my lyrics in a lyric book, certain experiences, I’ll just write lyrics right as they happen. I’ll even be at school, and hear someone say something, and I’ll just write it down. I have some [voice memos] I was looking at them the other day, and I have at least like 65 voice memos, and they go all the way back to like 2022, and it’s just me humming. There’s some of me, from the winter, singing Mariah Carey. Really loud. You know when a wave file is too big, so it makes the sound really fuzzy. Yeah, it’s like that.
Q: How are you feeling leading up to the True/False festival?
A: I’m really excited for people to hear the new songs. I feel like they sound a lot different from my drone songs, which I was writing at the beginning of last year. These are more shoegaze-inspired, so I just want to see how people feel about them, if they think they’re different from my other songs. I’ve played by myself a couple of times, but this will be my first time as heliophilia.
Q: What artists are you excited to see perform this year at True/False?
A: Yeah, there’s this one band called “@,” with a female lead, so I’m excited for that. And then there’s this one guy, Bill McKay, actually, that when we opened for Dinosaur Junior, we played with his band, Riley Walker. They were good, and he’s playing solo, so I’m excited to see that. Also, this girl Soumir, who we saw last year at True/False, she’s like this, I would call it like R&B pop.
Q: What are your plans for the future of heliophilia?
A: I’m hoping to do more shows, maybe even with more female-led bands. I think that would be a cool thing to add to the scene: there are some girl bassists and guitarists, but it would be cool for all of us to play together. I don’t listen to all the riot grrrl bands, but I like how Kathleen Hannah from Bikini Kill always calls the girls to the front and all the guys would have to go to the back.
Q: What are your plans for your future, as in career, school, or personal life?
A: I think art and music are what make me. I want to keep doing music forever, but just on the side. I don’t want to be a starving artist. I want to be pre-med, but also do music.
Q: You make all your own album covers and promo videos. What’s that process like?
A: I have a lot of art just stored up in my camera roll. It’s usually from breaks, since school is so busy. And sometimes I’ll just sketch out an idea I think is cool. When I know I have to make the cover, like for the princess and the pea’s demos cover, I kind of just took all of these drawings and collaged them together. For the War Pig cover, it was just a sketch that I did, and I added some effects and distorted it and stuff. The videos were just from an iPhone camera also. I tried to pick things that I thought suited the music. A lot of the music videos I like, like some of my bloody valentine’s stuff, they’re very DIY. Some of them are totally blurry and fuzzy, and you can’t even tell what it is. But it matches the music.
Q: Where can the people see you at the True/False film festival?
A: You’ll see me before a couple of pre-film sets, and at Busker’s Last Stand. That’s going to be really fun.
Make sure to check out Heliophilia this weekend at the True/False film festival, but if you just can’t wait, then listen to her music linked here! https://tr.ee/duCunqODQK
