Anubha Bajaj put out Ishaare on 8 October 2026, and eight days later it was the first song on Spotify's RADAR India playlist. When we took a snapshot of RADAR India and Indie India at 7:28 PM IST on 16 October, the Delhi singer, songwriter and producer had four different songs across the two lists, in five slots. The cover art for the new one is a flat blue square with five handwritten words in the lower left: "this is THAT song."

It's a cheeky line, and maybe a dare. I want to take it seriously, because almost nothing else about Anubha Bajaj's career has been loud. She is a self-taught producer who started in a converted storage room, wrote her biggest song at 19, and keeps making records that are over in about two and a half minutes.

Anubha Bajaj at a glance

  • Artist: Anubha Bajaj, Delhi-based singer, songwriter and producer (Loudest, April 2025); ANUBHA on YouTube, @anubha_bajaj on Instagram
  • New single: Ishaare, 2:22, released 8 October 2026; ℗ and © 2026 Anubha Bajaj on Spotify, ℗ 2026 Anubha Bajaj on Apple Music
  • RADAR India at our 7:28 PM IST capture on 16 October 2026: Ishaare No. 1, Savera (with Iqlipse Nova) No. 20, Jiya No. 47, of 75
  • Indie India at the same capture: Lamhey No. 24, Savera No. 33, of 75
  • Spotify at capture: 800,239 monthly listeners; Lamhey 70,409,528 plays, Savera 44,093,151
  • Ishaare credits (Apple Music): written by Anubha Bajaj and Ashwin Adwani; produced by Bajaj, Polar Beats and Kartik Sachdeva; arranged by Polar Beats, Sachdeva and Jay Rana

From a storage room to Lamhey

The biography she has given in interviews is short and consistent. "I didn't have formal training or a mentor, so I turned to YouTube," she told Raga2Rock in March 2025. Her first studio was "a mini storage room that I converted into a small studio," and she says Savera was made there. To Indulge Express's P Sangeetha this March she described the order she learned things in: "It started with learning the guitar, then the piano, and eventually music production, and before I knew it, songwriting."

That order matters to me. Plenty of singers on these playlists hand production to someone else. Bajaj is credited as a producer on Lamhey, Ishaare and Tu Mila on Apple Music, and she told Raga2Rock that "there are still very few women who do full-time music production."

Her Apple Music catalogue starts with Tu Na Ja, a May 2021 single with Saaz Semwal, and her first solo single, Parinda, in February 2022. Lamhey followed on 24 February 2023. "I wrote that song when I was 19 with absolutely no expectations," she told Indulge Express. "None of us really realised its potential when it was just sitting in our WhatsApp group chat before release." At our capture Lamhey had 70.4 million Spotify plays, the most of any song on her page.

Fans call her the "Indian Charlie Puth", as Loudest's Ojasvi Kapoor noted in 2025, and she has owned the comparison: she told GrooveNexus she has been "very vocal about him being my content inspiration." Her own series of reels goes by the name Anything Can Be Music. Asked by Loudest how she reads her audience, she gave a refreshingly unromantic answer: "Comments, shares, saves—that's the real data."

Inside Lamhey and Jiya

Lamhey is a song about time running out, and it is barely two and a half minutes long. I don't think that's an accident. The line it keeps returning to, as printed in the lyrics under Sony Music India's official video, is "Lamhe kho rahe hai yeh fir na aaye": these moments are slipping away and won't come back. A little later comes "Kal na rahengi baate", tomorrow these conversations won't be here. And between the lines the hook falls back on "Tu hu hu hu", one word and then a hum where the rest of the sentence should be. It reads like someone who has run out of words before the moment is over, which is exactly what the song is about.

Jiya, from March 2025, is the song where she stepped out of her comfort zone, by her own account. She told GrooveNexus in April 2025 that she wanted "that blend between chill pop music and a Rajasthani touch to the lyrics", and that her favourite part was the Punjabi verse, "not only because it's my first time singing Punjabi in a song". The lyrics printed under the acoustic version on her YouTube channel, with guitars by Aronjoy Das and Mukul Jain recording and mixing at Ferris Wheel Studios, open with that verse: "Takdi main teri raahaan", I keep watching the road for you. The chorus comes to rest on "more jiya", my heart, which is the Rajasthani touch she was talking about. For a song filed under chill pop, it is a surprisingly old-fashioned piece of longing.

Ferris Wheel Studios turns up across her credits, from Lamhey to Jiya. Mukul Jain also mixed and mastered Navjot Ahuja's Khat there, which we noted in our review of Khat. Small rooms in this scene are shared rooms.

Ishaare, and "this is THAT song."

Ishaare means signals, or hints, a fitting title for a record that arrived with very little explanation. I found no press coverage of it, and at our capture there was no video on her own YouTube channel, only an auto-generated audio track "Provided to YouTube by Erik", the distributor. The credits read like a small team that already knows each other: Ashwin Adwani, her co-writer on Jiya and Tu Mila, writes with her again; Polar Beats, who produced and mixed Jiya, plays guitar and co-produces; Kartik Sachdeva, a co-producer on Tu Mila, plays keyboards.

I'm not going to quote Ishaare's lyrics. No lyric sheet had been published that I could check, and a song this short deserves better than a guess. But the artwork and the length point the same way: this is a writer who trusts a short song to do its work and won't explain it.

The No. 1 position deserves a caution. RADAR India is Spotify's own editorial list, described on the playlist as "Most exciting artists from the Indian Indie scene. Cover: Anubha Bajaj". Her photo is on the playlist's cover too. A slot like that is an editor's decision, not a count of plays, and her artist page did not yet show a play count for Ishaare at our capture. We have written about how much these few lists decide before. What it does tell you is that somebody at Spotify wants her to be the face of the list this week.

Two minutes and twenty-two seconds

Ishaare is 2:22. Savera is 2:23. Tu Mila is 2:23. Lamhey is 2:29. Jiya is the long one at 3:02. At our capture the median song on RADAR India ran 2:53 and the median on Indie India ran 3:17. Only 12 of RADAR India's 75 songs were 2:22 or shorter.

Short songs get blamed on short attention spans. Our study of Indian indie song lengths put Fresh Finds India's median at 3:15 against Rock in India's 4:50, and argued that brevity is a craft. Bajaj's short songs make that case better than most. They don't read as cut down. Lamhey is a complete thought about time slipping, and it stops when the thought is done. I would rather hear a 2:29 song that ends on purpose than a four-minute one that repeats its chorus because it's afraid to stop.

The paperwork

The rights lines on her releases tell their own story, and it is worth reading quietly. Parinda and Aasmaan in 2022 were ℗ Anubha Bajaj; Mann Mera, her 2022 single with Karm Solah, was ℗ Big Bang Records. Lamhey, Jaane Hi Do and Savera, from February 2023 to November 2024, are ℗ Sony Music Entertainment India. Jiya and Tu Mila, from March 2025 to February 2026, are ℗ Universal Music India. This year's re-recording of Parinda with UNPLG'd is ℗ Unplgd Records. Ishaare is ℗ 2026 Anubha Bajaj again.

She described herself to News18 in March 2025 as someone who has "always been independent, making music from my own home studio", while the song that made her name carried Sony's line. Both things can be true; we've looked at who owns Indian indie masters and how often a major's name sits on a bedroom record. I'm not going to read a contract into a credit line. I will note that the song now at No. 1 is her first solo single since Parinda in 2022 to carry her own name as ℗ owner, and that she told Indulge Express what that kind of freedom costs: "You can take your music in any direction you choose, but you're also fully accountable for your own success."

What this publication thinks

Anubha Bajaj has spent three years writing very short songs about small things, a moment slipping, a road being watched, and the playlists have quietly kept them. Lamhey is the one I would hand someone first, and the Punjabi verse of Jiya, written with Ashwin Adwani, is the passage of hers I'd quote to make the case. Ishaare has the top slot and a cover that promises a lot. In March she told Indulge Express to expect her to get experimental. On the evidence so far, the two-and-a-half-minute form is something she has chosen, not something she has been handed, and I'd like to hear what she does when she breaks it.

FAQ

Who is Anubha Bajaj?

Anubha Bajaj is a Delhi-based singer, songwriter and producer, best known for Lamhey (2023), Savera with Iqlipse Nova (2024) and Jiya (2025). She has said in interviews that she taught herself through YouTube and began recording in a storage room converted into a home studio.

When was Ishaare released?

Ishaare – Single came out on 8 October 2026 on Spotify and Apple Music. It runs 2:22 and carries the line ℗ 2026 Anubha Bajaj.

Who worked on Ishaare?

Apple Music credits Anubha Bajaj (lead vocals, composition, lyrics, production), Ashwin Adwani (composition, lyrics), Polar Beats (guitar, arrangement, production), Kartik Sachdeva (keyboards, arrangement, production) and Jay Rana (arrangement).

Where is Anubha Bajaj on Spotify's playlists?

At our 7:28 PM IST capture on 16 October 2026, Ishaare was No. 1 on RADAR India, with Savera at No. 20 and Jiya at No. 47. On Indie India, Lamhey was No. 24 and Savera No. 33.

How old was Anubha Bajaj when she wrote Lamhey?

She told Indulge Express in March 2026 that she wrote Lamhey at 19. The single was released on 24 February 2023.

Sources

Cover: Anubha Bajaj in a Polaroid-style photo on white bedsheets, from the official Jiya single artwork (artwork credited to The Scion in the Jiya lyric video's YouTube description); shown in full and centred on a blurred extension of the same artwork at 1200×630 by discography.in. Source: https://music.apple.com/in/album/jiya-single/1802556859.

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