Noor and Khan, the pairing of producer Noor (Shivam Choraria) and 18-year-old singer-songwriter Khan (Yusuf Khan), are sitting at the very top of Spotify's Indie India playlist with a song they made in one afternoon. At our snapshot at 9:25 PM IST on 21 October 2026, Aarzu, credited to Noor, Khan and Madhurxo, was No. 1 on Indie India and No. 11 on RADAR India. It was No. 1 on Indie India when we checked on 16 October as well, so this is not a one-night fluke.

I have had Aarzu on in the background for weeks without really listening to it, which is probably how most people meet it: as a Reel soundtrack, a few seconds of a hook about someone's shyness. Sitting down with it properly changed my mind about a few things. It is a smaller, odder and more careful record than its numbers suggest, and the story of how it was released says a lot about where Indian indie money and ownership sit in 2026.

Noor and Khan at a glance

  • Noor: the electronic-pop project of producer Shivam Choraria, 23 according to Free Press Journal (September 2026)
  • Khan: singer-songwriter Yusuf Khan, 18, described by Free Press Journal as a "Delhi boy"
  • Third credit: Madhurxo, on vocals
  • Aarzu single: released 31 December 2025, 3:07, ℗ 2025 Shivam Choraria/Of the Wilderness on Apple Music
  • Aarzu EP: 23 January 2026, adding Akhiyaan and three instrumentals, ℗ 2026 Shivam Choraria/Of the Wilderness
  • Aarzu (with Asim Azhar): 29 May 2026, ℗ 2026 Asim Azhar
  • Follow-up: O Piya with Raqib, 10 July 2026, ℗ 2026 Yusuf Khan, Shivam Choraria/Of The Wilderness
  • Billboard's India Songs chart: debuted at No. 8 on 27 June 2026, peaked at No. 4 on 18 July, and is No. 11 in its 18th week on the chart dated 24 October 2026
  • Playlists at 9:25 PM IST, 21 October 2026: No. 1 on Indie India, No. 11 on RADAR India

An Instagram DM and a Delhi hotel room

The origin story is short, and both of them tell it the same way. Khan messaged Noor on Instagram. "He reached out to me saying, 'Hey, I love your music and I also make music.' At first, I was very ignorant," Noor told Hindustan Times' Monica Yadav in July. Khan, for his part, was in the middle of exams and did not expect a reply. Noor was travelling to Delhi a couple of weeks later, sent over a few demos, and they met in the hotel room where he was staying.

"In about six hours, we ended up making three songs," Noor said in the same interview. "We made it in a random session, fine-tuned it later and put it out ourselves." Free Press Journal's Narendra Kusnur adds a detail I like: Noor says the beat, built around a sarangi, is what pulled the writing out of Khan, and that "it was all done in one day."

Neither of them came up through a conservatory. Noor told Free Press Journal that he dropped out of music school, "which is kind of funny", and that "my laptop is the instrument I can best play". His first heroes were the EDM producers KSHMR and Martin Garrix. Khan's are poets: the same piece lists Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Mirza Ghalib, Gulzar and Jaun Elia. Put those two reading lists side by side and you more or less have the song.

What Aarzu actually sounds like

The hook arrives early and it is plain as anything: "Tera sharmana, meri jaana, kabhi rakh loon chhupa ke" (your shyness, my love, I'd like to hide it away sometime). There is no clever turn in it. Khan told Free Press Journal that was deliberate: "I was just very honest while writing Aarzu. I didn't try to make it clever or write it for people." To Mirchi's Meera Venugopal he described it as "simple, catchy, and honest", and then said something more interesting: "For us, Aarzu has always been the colour yellow."

I think I hear what he means. As with our other recent pieces, I ran Apple Music's 30-second preview through a level and frequency meter, and the numbers explain the feel better than any adjective I could reach for. The clip pulses. Its loudness swings by about 8 dB from one second to the next, in a steady push and release that sounds like the whole track ducking under the kick. About 61 percent of its energy sits below 120 Hz, and the stereo picture is narrow. That is the electronic producer in Noor: a warm, heavy, breathing bed, with the voice placed right in the middle of it.

What stops it from feeling like a dance record is Khan's delivery, which is close and unhurried, almost spoken in places. And then there is the ending. Free Press Journal points out that Aarzu closes with a recitation of a Faiz sher, "Donon jahaan teri mohabbat mein haar ke". The first time I caught it on headphones, it reframed everything before it. A three-minute crush song turns, in its last few seconds, into a nod to one of Faiz's best-known ghazals of loss. "I don't think Urdu needs to be simplified. It just needs to be felt," Khan told Mirchi. That ending is where he proves it.

The bridge belongs to someone else. Noor told Free Press Journal that they brought in Madhura, an old friend, for some of the vocals, and that "for the bridge I don't think anyone apart from her could have pulled off what she did." That appears to be the Madhurxo in the credits. It is a short passage, but it is the one moment where the song opens out and lets a second voice in, and it is the part I find myself waiting for.

My one reservation is length of stay. Aarzu does one thing beautifully and then does it again. The pulse never really changes, and by the last chorus I wanted the bed to drop away for a bar, the way the Faiz lines finally do. It is a small complaint about a song that clearly did not need my help.

O Piya, and the Asim Azhar version

Two releases followed. On 29 May 2026 came Aarzu (with Asim Azhar), a new version with the Pakistani singer, released on Apple Music under a ℗ 2026 Asim Azhar line. Noor told Hindustan Times the idea came from listeners across the border: "There was already a lot of traction coming from that side of the border. We thought, why not do something that pushes it even more?" He was also frank that it made them nervous. "We were digging articles thinking, 'Can we also get into trouble?'"

O Piya arrived on 10 July 2026 with Raqib, whom Free Press Journal identifies as Raqib Ali, Khan's neighbourhood friend, on what Khan called Raqib's debut single. It is a softer song, about comfort rather than longing, and like Aarzu it ends on borrowed poetry, this time Gulzar's Tumhara Noor Hai. On the meter it is flatter than Aarzu: the preview's loudness barely moves, staying within about 2 dB, with a similar weight of low end. It is pleasant, and Noor told Hindustan Times he prefers its writing, but to my ears it lacks the push and pull that makes Aarzu stick. I would play Aarzu first, then Akhiyaan from the EP, and come to O Piya third.

Are Noor and Khan independent?

Mostly, with an asterisk. The recordings are theirs: Apple Music lists Aarzu, the EP and O Piya with ℗ lines naming Shivam Choraria/Of the Wilderness, and O Piya adds Yusuf Khan. That is what Noor meant by "put it out ourselves", and the playlist pages treat them as independent.

The asterisk is distribution. Amazon Music shows the EP as ℗ 2026 Shivam Choraria/Of the Wilderness but © 2026 Universal Music India, and Free Press Journal reported in September that "both songs are backed by Universal Music India." So the masters appear to sit with the artists while a major handles the release side. It is the arrangement we described in who owns Indian indie music masters, and it is a much better position for two first-time artists than a traditional signing. If you are reading this as a musician, it fits closely with our guide to releasing music without a record label.

It is also worth noticing who gets billed. Noor is a producer, and the song is credited to him first. That is part of a trend we wrote about in Indian indie collabs, where producers get billed, and Aarzu might be its biggest example this year.

Where Noor and Khan go next

Free Press Journal reported a tour that took in Raipur, New Delhi and Mumbai, with Bengaluru on 12 September, and Noor said they were playing "a lot of unreleased stuff". Khan has his own solo catalogue on Spotify, including a single called Chanda, a title that comes up again when he talks to Mirchi about their studio shorthand ("Bhai, make it more Chanda").

Noor gave Mirchi the line I keep coming back to: "Numbers have never driven me. They didn't when I started making music in my room back in 10th grade, and they don't now." Coming from someone with a song at No. 1 on Indie India, that could sound like a pose. Having lived with the record for a few days, I am inclined to believe him. Aarzu does not sound like it was built for a chart. It sounds like two people who had just met, finding out in six hours what they had in common, and leaving a Faiz couplet at the door on the way out. Our piece on Indian indie languages argued that Hindi was swallowing discovery. Khan is quietly sneaking Urdu back in.

FAQ

Who are Noor and Khan?

Noor is the electronic-pop project of producer Shivam Choraria, and Khan is the singer-songwriter Yusuf Khan, who was 18 when Hindustan Times interviewed him in July 2026. They met through Instagram and made Aarzu, their breakout song, in a single session in a Delhi hotel room, according to Hindustan Times.

Who sang Aarzu?

Aarzu is credited to Noor, Khan and Madhurxo. Khan sings it and Noor produced it, and JioSaavn lists both as composers and lyricists. Noor told Free Press Journal that an old friend, Madhura, sang the bridge. A later version, Aarzu (with Asim Azhar), was released on 29 May 2026.

When was Aarzu released?

The Aarzu single was released on 31 December 2025, and the Aarzu EP, with Akhiyaan and instrumentals, followed on 23 January 2026. Free Press Journal says the music video came out in March 2026.

Is Aarzu on Indie India and RADAR India?

Yes. At 9:25 PM IST on 21 October 2026, Aarzu was No. 1 on Spotify's Indie India and No. 11 on RADAR India.

Which label released Aarzu?

The recordings carry ℗ lines for Shivam Choraria/Of the Wilderness on Apple Music, so the masters appear to be the artists' own. Amazon Music shows © Universal Music India, and Free Press Journal reports that the songs are backed by Universal Music India.

Is this the same Aarzu as KhoslaRaghu's EP?

No. KhoslaRaghu, the duo of Sanchit Khosla and Rishabh Raghuvanshi, released a separate EP also called Aarzu in 2026, as Mirchi reported in July. The Indie India No. 1 is the Noor, Khan and Madhurxo song.

Sources

Cover: Noor (left) and Khan (right), from the official artist photos on their Spotify artist pages (photographers not credited); placed side by side on a blurred, darkened extension of the same photos at 1200x630 by discography.in. Source: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7F5LO6TFFBGkRhsQdCcLVm.

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