Vasuki Vaibhav made Gira Gira in 2019 inside the Bigg Boss Kannada house, with buckets and furniture for a rhythm section, and released it properly only on 9 April 2026. Six months after that release, the Bengaluru composer's self-owned single is on Spotify's RADAR India playlist. At our snapshot at 12:25 AM IST on 17 October 2026, Gira Gira was No. 18 of 75.

That is an odd thing to find on a playlist built to spot new Indian artists. Vasuki Vaibhav (ವಾಸುಕಿ ವೈಭವ್ in Kannada, often just Vasuki in the press) is not new. He has scored Kannada films for a decade, and his Spotify page showed 1,695,373 monthly listeners when we looked at about 12:27 AM IST. What is new is a song of his that belongs to nobody else: no film, no producer's banner, a ℗ line with his own name on it. This is a review of that song, and of the long road it took to get here.

Vasuki Vaibhav's Gira Gira at a glance

  • Artist: Vasuki Vaibhav, Bengaluru-based Kannada singer, composer, lyricist and actor; theatre since childhood (Deccan Chronicle, 2016); a finalist on Bigg Boss Kannada Season 7 (Filmibeat, 2020); @vasuki_vaibhav_ on Instagram
  • Single: Gira Gira, 3:30, released 9 April 2026; ℗ and © 2026 Vasuki Vaibhav on Spotify, ℗ 2026 Vasuki Vaibhav on Apple Music and JioSaavn; also known by its hook, Tale Gira Gira
  • Credits (YouTube description of the official video): music, lyrics and vocals by Vasuki Vaibhav; produced and vocal-arranged by Soorya Praveen; guitar by Ritwik Bhattacharya; melodica by Praveen D Rao; backing vocals by Sunidhi Ganesh and Vasuki Vaibhav; mixed by Gokul Abhishek, mixed and mastered by Vivek Thomas
  • Video: Gira Gira Official Video Song, directed by Prakyath Narayan, starring Vasuki Vaibhav and Mayuri Nataraja, published on his YouTube channel on 9 April 2026 "in association with" Divo Music
  • Playlist at our 12:25 AM IST capture on 17 October 2026: RADAR India No. 18; not on Indie India

A song with no instruments

The origin story is the best thing about Gira Gira, so it is worth getting right. The Times of India's Yemen S reported in April that Vasuki created the song "within the confines of the set" during his 2019 stint on the show, and that he and other contestants used "everyday objects like buckets and furniture to build rhythm". Clips of it were replayed widely, the paper said, and they are still easy to find: one fan upload titled Tale gira gira showed 278,910 views when we searched YouTube tonight.

Then he sat on it. "Wherever I went, eight out of ten people would ask me when I would officially release Gira Gira," he told the paper. He had been playing it with his band at concerts. "Back then it was very raw. Now it's been produced and slightly reworked."

I find that delay more interesting than it first looks. A Kannada film composer with a much-requested song in hand could easily have found a film to put it in. Vasuki waited more than six years and put it out under his own name. In April 2020, a few months after the show, he told Filmibeat he was going to venture into independent, "non-filmy" music with his friend Nobin Paul. Gira Gira is the clearest sign I can find that the plan survived.

What the record does with the bucket beat

The finished version is not a bucket song any more, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. The credit list is long and professional: Soorya Praveen produced it and arranged the vocals, three people added programming, there is extra synth from Akshay Krishna, guitar from Ritwik Bhattacharya and a melodica from Praveen D Rao. It was mixed twice over, by Gokul Abhishek at Budbudke Studio and then by Vivek Thomas in Kochi, who also mastered it.

Apple Music's 30-second preview is the only part of the audio I'll describe in detail, and it tells you how carefully this was built. The level barely moves for the first ten seconds. Then, around the eleven-second mark, it drops back for two or three seconds, as if the band has stepped aside, and from about seventeen seconds the clip is at its loudest and stays there to the end. It is a pop arrangement doing the job a pop arrangement should: make you wait a little, then give you the hook.

And the hook is the whole song. The lyrics printed in the video description are in Kannada, and the refrain is four lines of ತಲೆ ಗಿರ ಗಿರ ಗಿರ, tale gira gira gira. Tale is Kannada for head. Gira gira is the sound of it spinning. You do not need to speak the language to get the joke, and I suspect that is a large part of how a Kannada song ended up among so many Hindi ones on this playlist.

My reservation is the one you'd expect. The charm of the 2019 clips was that it was a song made out of nothing, in a room where you could not leave. A clean studio track can't keep that, and this one doesn't really try. I would have kept one rough edge, a clatter, a room sound, something to remind you where it came from. Instead the reminder lives in the press story and the old fan clips.

The video, and who it belongs to

The video is about as bright as a Kannada pop video gets. The thumbnail alone is a yellow sky with cartoon clouds, Mayuri Nataraja on a stool holding a small pink flower and Vasuki grinning behind a much bigger one; the credits list a choreographer, nine dancers and pixel animation. Prakyath Narayan directed it. "I told the director I wanted the dancers to portray my feelings. He suggested a quirky romantic approach, and that's what we went with," Vasuki told the Times of India. It had 9,816,883 views when we checked at about 12:28 AM IST, and it runs 4:12 against the record's 3:30.

The ownership details matter for a publication like ours. The recording is ℗ 2026 Vasuki Vaibhav on Spotify, Apple Music and JioSaavn, and Gaana lists the label as Vasuki Vaibhav. The video was produced by Karmayogi Productions and released on his own channel, but its description says it is "in association with" Divo Music, which it describes as a Warner Music India company, and the thumbnail carries a "loopd by Divo" logo. We are treating Gira Gira as an independent release because the master is credited to him, and noting the Divo connection so you can weigh it yourself. For how much that ℗ line can tell you, see our piece on who owns Indian indie music masters.

Where Gira Gira sits in Vasuki Vaibhav's career

It helps to know how he got to that house. Speaking to Deccan Chronicle's Shashiprasad SM in October 2016, when his debut score for Rama Rama Re was out, Vasuki said he had been doing Kannada theatre since he was six. He had worked as a chorus singer, track singer and lyricist for composers including K Kalyan, Anoop Seelin and Raghu Dixit. His father, K Jayaram, worked on the technical side of theatre. "However, my mother still feels worried about my filmi journey," he said.

A year later the Times of India was calling him "the voice behind Kaagadada Doniyalli", the Kirik Party song he sang. He told Dhwani Desai that the director D Satya Prakash had written another version of the song, which Vasuki "sung on a mobile phone" and sent to Rakshit Shetty. A rough take on a phone, polished later: it is the Gira Gira story in miniature.

His Spotify numbers show how large the film work still looms. When we checked at about 12:27 AM IST, Innunu Bekagide showed 42,616,527 plays, Arere Avala Naguva 36,462,800 and Kaagadada Doniyalli 34,762,885. Gira Gira showed 6,322,866. It is not his biggest song. But the other four in his top five all come from film soundtracks (on Apple Music they are ℗ PRK Audio, Rishab Audio and Raghu Dixit Music, and Kaagadada Doniyalli is from Kirik Party). Gira Gira is the one that is his alone, and it is the one Spotify's editors have put next to young independents.

That is the part of this I like most. We have written about the Bengaluru indie scene as a city of bands and bedroom songwriters. Here is one of its film composers walking the other way, out of cinema and towards releasing music without a record label, with a song in Kannada and a hook anyone can sing. Our piece on Indian indie languages found discovery tilting heavily towards Hindi. Gira Gira is a useful exception.

Is it a great song? It is a very good pop song with a better story than most, and I'd rather hear him take the next one further from the film sound than repeat this. The Times of India says the releases lined up include Mansinda Yarunu Kettoralla, another fan favourite from his reality-show days. If he does to that what he did to this, I'd still like to hear a bucket somewhere in the mix.

FAQ

Who is Vasuki Vaibhav?

Vasuki Vaibhav is a Bengaluru-based Kannada singer, composer, lyricist and actor. He has worked in theatre since childhood (Deccan Chronicle), made his debut as a film composer with Rama Rama Re in 2016, sang Kaagadada Doniyalli in Kirik Party, and was a finalist on Bigg Boss Kannada Season 7.

When was Gira Gira released?

Gira Gira was released on 9 April 2026, and the official video went up on his YouTube channel the same day. The song runs 3:30 on Spotify and Apple Music.

Is Gira Gira the song from Bigg Boss Kannada?

Yes. The Times of India reported that he created it in 2019 inside the Bigg Boss Kannada Season 7 house, using buckets and furniture for rhythm. The 2026 release is a produced and reworked version.

Who made the Gira Gira video?

It was directed by Prakyath Narayan, produced by Karmayogi Productions and stars Vasuki Vaibhav and Mayuri Nataraja, according to the YouTube credits. The description says it was released in association with Divo Music.

Is Gira Gira on Spotify's RADAR India playlist?

Yes. At our 12:25 AM IST capture on 17 October 2026 it was No. 18 on RADAR India. It was not on Indie India at that time. Positions change often.

Sources

Cover: Vasuki Vaibhav laughing and looking up, in a denim jacket against a grey backdrop, from the official artist photo on his Spotify artist page (photographer not credited); placed on a blurred extension of the same photo at 1200×630 by discography.in. Source: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vdQaS4RKtL7t7n6Php6A5.

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