QUIET LIGHT

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Quiet Light (AKA Riya Mahesh) is a Texas-based producer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist. Her songs are, in her own words, “dream sequences” — her Lynchian, liminal electropop sounds are both frozen in time and built to withstand its weathering, weaving sharp, sparse songwriting with gossamer strands of ambient, electronic, and folk. Her 2020 self-titled debut EP Quiet Light foregrounded a virtuosic run of independent, self-produced records, including 2023’s Blue Angel Sparkling Silver and Fourth of July, Going Nowhere (2024), and Pure Hearts (2025). Along the way, she’s earned critical acclaim from outlets like The FADER, been co-signed by Iggy Pop, and provided direct support for Cameron Winter, Erika de Casier, Nilufer Yanya, and Chanel Beads on tour. Now, with her forthcoming mixtape Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2, her debut release on True Panther (Oklou, Jawnino, Grace Ives), she proves she’s a generational voice that’s here to stay. The tape plays out like a dreamy smash cut of the places, faces, and influences that brought Mahesh here as she delivers her most assured project yet, following her own inner compass to new, revelatory heights. As she puts it: “This record is for people who dream about what their life could be like.” 

Hailing from Dallas, Texas, and now based in Austin, Mahesh’s collection of influences—from Shania Twain to Harold Budd to Imogen Heap—is nearly as eclectic and expansive as her classical pedigree. A former prom queen, she studied piano, opera, and even sang in a renaissance choir all before graduating high school, still somehow finding the time to upload her first demos to SoundCloud along the way. Her 2020 self-titled debut EP Quiet Light inspired her to master LogicPro, learning to trust her production instincts as wholeheartedly as her songwriting acumen. This new skill set paved the way for a virtuosic run of independent, self-produced records, including Blue Angel Sparkling Silver and Fourth Of July (2023), Going Nowhere (2024), and Pure Hearts (2025). 

Now, with years of travel and growth under her belt, Mahesh is preparing to release Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2, a sister tape to her 2023 project of the same name, stamping both a full-circle milestone and a significant creative leap. It’s a dusky, elegant reflection on home, identity, and connection, layered with graceful synthwork and irresistible hooks. As life started to get serious, and medical school and a record deal came knocking, Mahesh moved back to Texas, finding herself nostalgic for the freedom of recording Blue Angel Sparkling Silver: a time when the confines of a professional career never crossed her mind, and every creative choice was unfiltered, made simply out of love for the music. Going back in time wasn’t exactly an option—but recapturing the raw, unadulterated spirit of those halcyon days was. 

Enter Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2, which finds its magic somewhere between suburban nostalgia and the uncertainty of a long, open road, bucking genre confines in search of unfettered emotion. The project is one of reconciling contradiction, as Mahesh oscillates between the sterility and carnage of the Massachusetts hospital where she’s completing her medical school training and the secluded softness of her bedroom studio in Austin. The through line is one of self-acceptance: “My entire life, I’ve tried my best to fit in,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to be like everyone else. I’m not that girl anymore—I turned 25 years old recently and realized, well, my prefrontal cortex is developed, so I guess this is just how I am. I am crazy; and the best thing that I can do for myself is to just accept that this is the way that I am.” 

Voice memos gathered over time from friends and family capture the past two years of her life in vivid honesty, from the profound (the spoken-word couplet “Yelling into your ear/ the sky that real infinity”)  to the not-so-profound (friends musing: could a PB&J sandwich obsession constitute a midlife crisis?). For Mahesh, these field recordings are more than just proof of life—the good and the bad. They’re the link that makes an album indebted to the surreal style of inspirations like Angelo Badalamenti and Clarice Lispector still feel personal, vulnerable, and defiantly true. “Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 is my life in entirety,” she explains. “It’s my life when I’m awake and asleep.” 

The long and winding road that led her home to Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 shines through across a record that meets any attempt at demarcation with honest personality, no aestheticizing necessary. On lead single “Berlin,” a baroque ballad featuring Henry Solomon on saxophone, she laments time through the lens of a lost relationship that held things together. “You used to be obsessed with me, and now you don’t know” her voice breaks with a soft drawl, anchoring her sound among the folk and country artists who shaped her. Later, “You Say I Love You” doubts a current lover over a shimmering break-beat and waxing leads; ephemeral undertows of synths, vocals, and string instruments appear like neurons firing off in the brain. “When you want to go, I’ll go,” she repeats, as much a plea as a dare to evolve. 

And on the euphoric, guitar-driven “Self Tape,”  the culmination of two years of work, Mahesh chases her own slice of heaven. “There was this really great hill in my neighborhood in Dallas where I grew up,” she remembers. “This hill was right next to my house. I would ride my bike up and down this hill. Riding my bike up the hill was a bitch—but riding downhill, well, that was just like heaven. It would be too hot to ride my bike during the day in the Texas summer heat, but at sunset, it was the perfect temperature. This song feels like that. It feels like my first kiss with someone I really wanted. It feels like pure bliss.”