Hansika Pareek has three songs on Spotify's RADAR India playlist this morning, and the one I keep going back to is the one almost nobody has played. At our snapshot at 4:29 AM IST on 17 October 2026, the Ajmer-born singer and composer held No. 19 with Ratiyaan, No. 45 with Jee Na Paaye and No. 55 with Aaja Re Piya, a two-and-a-half-minute song she composed herself, with lyrics by her elder sister, Khushi Pareek. Spotify showed 192,691 plays for it at about 4:40 AM IST. Her film duet Tum Ho Toh, from Saiyaara, showed 296,784,820.

That gap is the review, more or less. Aaja Re Piya is a small, careful, self-released song from a singer with nearly 11 million monthly Spotify listeners, and it is getting lost inside her own release schedule. I think it deserves better, and I also think it is not quite finished.

Hansika Pareek's Aaja Re Piya at a glance

  • Artist: Hansika Pareek, singer and composer from Ajmer, Rajasthan (Indulge Express, May 2025); on Instagram and YouTube as @hansikaapareek
  • Song: Aaja Re Piya, credited to Hansika Pareek and Khushi Pareek; released 7 August 2026; 2:34 on Spotify
  • Credits (her YouTube description): singer and composer Hansika Pareek; lyrics Khushi Pareek; music producer Aditya Bisht; flute Parth Shankar; video Ocean Motion Pictures
  • Rights: ℗ 2026 Hansika Pareek on Spotify and Apple Music; Apple files it under Indie Pop
  • Acoustic version: 22 August 2026, 2:41, also ℗ 2026 Hansika Pareek
  • On RADAR India at 4:29 AM IST, 17 October 2026: Ratiyaan (No. 19), Jee Na Paaye (No. 45), Aaja Re Piya (No. 55); not on Indie India
  • Spotify: 10,895,767 monthly listeners at about 4:35 AM IST

A big voice, mostly on other people's records

If you know Hansika Pareek, you probably know her from a film. Tum Ho Toh, her duet with Vishal Mishra for Yash Raj Films' Saiyaara, is ℗ 2025 YRF Music and is the top song on her Spotify page by a distance. Indulge Express described her in May 2025 as the voice on Darshan Raval's Sajna and on Ajeeb-O-Gareeb with Arijit Singh for Azaad. Spotify made her its RADAR India artist in February 2024, which put her on the Times Square billboard, as Rolling Stone India's Anurag Tagat reported that June.

Then look at how much she releases. Apple Music's catalogue lists nine releases with her name on them dated between 6 August and 30 September 2026 alone: an EP with Maahi on Saregama, a single with Rito Riba on Play DMF, another on AT Azaad, a set of Krishna bhajans on Zee Music, a Salim-Sulaiman song on Merchant Records, film songs on Heavy Budget Entertainment and Universal. Only two of the nine say ℗ 2026 Hansika Pareek, and both are Aaja Re Piya: the original and the acoustic version. The other seven carry other companies' names.

Even Ratiyaan and Jee Na Paaye, the two songs above it on RADAR, carry ℗ lines for StereoAux Entertainment. We have written about who owns Indian indie masters and why it matters. With Hansika Pareek it matters a lot, because this is one of the very few places in her catalogue where both the song and the recording are hers.

In June 2024, before her first set made up only of her own songs, she told Rolling Stone India: "It's very rare, because I don't think many people have heard that many songs of mine." Two years and a few hundred million plays later, Spotify's numbers say that is still true of the songs she writes herself.

What she says the song is

She explains it herself in the description of the official video on her YouTube channel, posted at about 12:15 PM IST on 7 August. She wrote it "from a feeling of quietly missing someone and wanting to be close to them," and while composing it she found herself "going back to the kind of bandish-inspired melodies" she learned through Hindustani classical music. Aditya Bisht, she writes, "blended it with modern sounds," and her elder sister Khushi "wrote the lyrics with so much heart."

That matches what she told Indulge Express's Atreyee Poddar in May 2025 about how she writes: "Usually, I start with an instrument," she said, and "then whatever I'm feeling, I try to shape it into words." This time the words came from her sister. The five songs Spotify lists as Khushi Pareek's most popular, all shared with Hansika, are devotional, among them Shiva Tere Charno Mein, Maa Tu Hai and Hey Shiva. Aaja Re Piya is a love song, and a quiet one.

A bandish is a fixed composition in Hindustani music, the short melodic idea a singer comes back to and builds on. That is a lovely place to start a pop song from. It is also where my problem with the record begins.

What the record does, preview by preview

My listening notes come from Apple Music's 30-second previews of Aaja Re Piya, its acoustic version, Ratiyaan and her 2024 self-released single Chaand Naya, which I played back to back and also measured. A preview is a short slice of a song, so treat this as an impression, not a verdict on the whole track.

The original barely moves. Across the middle 25 seconds of the preview, its level stays within about 2 decibels, and around half of its energy sits below 120 Hz, the range where bass and kick live. Under the voice there is a slow, even pulse that my rough measurement puts at about 70 beats a minute. The effect is warm and very steady, like a heavy blanket, with her voice laid on top.

Ratiyaan, by comparison, swings by nearly 8 decibels in its preview and drops almost to silence for a couple of seconds near the end of it, before coming back. It breathes in a way the new song does not. Chaand Naya, her self-released 2024 single with Aditya Bisht and JUNO, goes further: its preview starts near a whisper and climbs by more than 20 decibels by the end, so this is not a team that only knows one setting.

The acoustic Aaja Re Piya sits somewhere in between. It is roughly 3 decibels quieter than the original, its low end falls to about a fifth of the energy, and the level moves by about 5 decibels instead of 2. The steady pulse is much weaker. To me the acoustic sounds more like the song she describes: someone missing someone, in a room.

So here is my honest view. The melody is the best thing about this record, and it is clearly hers. But a bandish is something you are supposed to open up, and at 2:34 there is not much room to do that. The median track on RADAR India this morning runs 2:53, and 55 of the 75 tracks are longer than Aaja Re Piya. We have looked at song length in Indian indie before; with this one I understand the choice and do not quite agree with it. I can only judge the full arrangement from its length and a preview, but I would happily give it another minute, some of it for the flute Parth Shankar plays on it.

RADAR is doing its job here

Ratiyaan and Jee Na Paaye have big numbers of their own, 42,670,050 and 6,113,739 plays this morning. Aaja Re Piya has none of that, and the official video showed 46,999 YouTube views when I checked at about 4:40 AM IST, the acoustic video 27,484. Without the playlist, I doubt I would have found it.

We have written about Spotify's Indian indie gatekeepers and how much power a few playlists hold. This is the good side of that power: a quiet song put in front of people who would never have gone looking for it. RADAR India's current cover artist, Anubha Bajaj, whose self-released Ishaare sits at No. 1 this morning, is another example.

Who owns Aaja Re Piya

Spotify's album page lists both © 2026 Hansika Pareek and ℗ 2026 Hansika Pareek, and Apple Music shows the same ℗ line for the single and the acoustic version. Both videos sit on her own YouTube channel. No label or distributor is named in the credits, and we have not seen any press coverage of the release; everything above comes from the platforms and her own posts.

For an artist with her film schedule, that is a real choice. We have a guide on releasing music without a record label, and Aaja Re Piya is a working example of the hardest part of it: the song is yours, and so is the job of getting anyone to hear it. If you want to try that route yourself, our guide to pitching Spotify playlists in India explains how pitching to lists like RADAR works.

What I would like to hear next

I would like a longer Hansika Pareek song, written the way this one was, and given room. In December 2025 she told Mashable India that it "feels amazing that a song I made in my little room can reach someone miles away within minutes." Aaja Re Piya is the clearest sign yet of what a song from that room sounds like. I would gladly take another, even at four minutes, even if it never comes near Tum Ho Toh.

FAQ

Who is Hansika Pareek?

Hansika Pareek is an Indian singer and composer from Ajmer, Rajasthan, trained in Hindustani classical music. She is best known for film songs such as Tum Ho Toh from Saiyaara, and for her own singles including Ratiyaan and Aaja Re Piya. Her name is sometimes misspelled Parekh in the press. She had 10,895,767 monthly Spotify listeners on 17 October 2026.

When was Aaja Re Piya released?

Aaja Re Piya was released on 7 August 2026. An acoustic version followed on 22 August 2026. Both are ℗ 2026 Hansika Pareek. Some fan uploads spell the title Aja Re Piya.

Who wrote Aaja Re Piya?

According to the credits Hansika Pareek posted on YouTube, she composed and sang it, her elder sister Khushi Pareek wrote the lyrics, Aditya Bisht produced it and Parth Shankar played flute.

Is Aaja Re Piya on Spotify's RADAR India playlist?

Yes. At 4:29 AM IST on 17 October 2026 it was No. 55 on RADAR India, alongside her songs Ratiyaan at No. 19 and Jee Na Paaye at No. 45.

Is Hansika Pareek an independent artist?

She works across both worlds. Most of her releases, including her film songs and Ratiyaan, belong to labels such as YRF Music, Saregama and StereoAux Entertainment, but Aaja Re Piya and its acoustic version are self-released, with ℗ 2026 Hansika Pareek.

Sources

Cover: Hansika Pareek singing into a handheld microphone on stage in a black sequinned dress, from the official artist photo on her Spotify artist page (photographer not credited); placed on a blurred, darkened extension of the same photo at 1200×630 by discography.in. Source: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0RVfcqug2nB820dxIGycIW.

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