In the current pop music landscape, brimming with nepo babies and painfully curated personas, Weston Estate is a breath of fresh air. The band consists of five childhood friends: vocalists Manas Panchavati, Tanmay Joshi, and Marco Luka, with Abhi Manhass on bass and Srikar Nanduri on guitar. Their backstory is achingly authentic, reading like the perfect material for a future biopic; they were just normal kids messing around with FL Studio in their childhood bedrooms when, lucky for us, they struck gold.
The first song they ever released, a now-unavailable track called 'Another', sampled 'Tum Se Hi' from Jab We Met, turning a Bollywood classic into an R&B beat-laden bop. The song was recorded by Abhi, Srikar, and Tanmay during a sleepover in 2017, fueled by adolescent excitement and a budding passion for music. Soon, Manas and Marco joined their ranks, and they decided to call themselves 'Weston Estate', after a neighbourhood they often hung out in. They then spent their high school years fumbling through Soundcloud demos, releasing their first few songs on Spotify, and performing live at local events to find their groove.
The years that followed were a rollercoaster. As four out of five of the band members pursued college degrees, their music also gained traction. Suddenly, they were balancing classes with rising stardom, jumping between final exams and concerts across the United States. They’re the epitome of boys next door, like the random family friend’s kids you see every few weeks at a dinner party, and yet, they have over 600,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and tens of millions of streams.
Weston Estate can’t be put in a box. They call themselves a boyband, but evade the clichés associated with the title— all their work is self-written and produced, rooted in genuine experience rather than projecting a false image. Don’t expect them to break out into choreography at their shows; they perform with boyish vigour, jumping around on stage with uncontained energy. When I saw them live at a small college show in 2023, a student snuck onto the stage, and instead of shooing him off, they gave him a mic and let him sing a verse. At the end of their set, they jumped into the crowd and danced with us, with no clear lines between audience and performer.
I could describe their music as indie-alternative-pop, but a chronological listen through their discography makes it clear that they’re still evolving, changing with every release. Their latest EP, Superbloom, is a deviation from the lighter indie pop sound they were known for in years past. It’s melodically mature and more experimental than their previous work, unafraid to cross genre lines and play with electronic beats, rich R&B-esque vocal stacks, and acoustic instrumentation.
Superbloom’s opening track, 'I Saw Something', is a standout, opening with soulful vocals and the soft strum of a guitar, before picking up in the chorus and then completely deviating to an electronic sound in its second verse. Track 3, 'Go!', is another refreshing surprise, tapping into a Bollywood-inspired melody in its chorus, while track 5, 'Thinking Out Loud', flips between an alternative and almost hyperpop sound, using heavy distortion and vocal effects unlike anything else Weston Estate has released before.
Manas and Srikar from Weston Estate came together to answer our questions about Superbloom, their creative process, how their cultural identity impacts their position in the music industry, and what comes next for the band.
Weston Estate’s sound has evolved considerably since your early Soundcloud demos, bringing us to the complex vocal stacks and alt-indie pop sound you’re known for today. How did you develop the sound you’re known for today, especially since you write and produce all your music yourselves?
We started out doing this for fun, so a lot of our early music has a carefree and childlike air to it. As we got older and got out of school to start making music full time, we started becoming more intentional about the kinds of sounds, melodies and lyrics we would use. Our sound evolving has really been a product of our own growth, both as a band and as individuals.
What about ‘Superbloom,’ excites you most? What can listeners look forward to, particularly in comparison to your previous releases?
Making this EP has been a wild journey for us. The idea of it started after most of us had just gotten out of college and moved to LA, so we were completely devoting ourselves to music for the first time since the band started. It was a really exciting time, but also really scary because we had no idea what to expect from this new part of life that was beginning for all of us.
This project is essentially us shedding our old skin and trying to embrace all these new life changes. There’s beauty in this growth, but also a lot of uncertainty and discomfort that we wanted to represent on the EP. We used a lot of the softer, sweet sounds that our fans are used to hearing in our music, but we mixed in a lot of drive and distortion to make it feel more abrasive. It’s definitely like nothing our fans have ever heard from us before, so we’re really excited to see what they think and what parts of the EP resonate with them.
"This project is essentially us shedding our old skin and trying to embrace all these new life changes. There’s beauty in this growth, but also a lot of uncertainty and discomfort that we wanted to represent on the EP."Manas and Srikar from Weston Estate for Homegrown
What is your songwriting process like? How do you balance each band member’s creative vision? Do your respective musical backgrounds impact how you write?
There have been times where one of us has written basically an entire song and we split it up based on who wants to sing which parts, but there have also been songs where we all write the song together. Our songwriting process really varies from song to song, so we always try to keep it flexible. The hardest part is definitely balancing each of our individual perspectives. At the end of the day, we’re five different people with five different tastes. That makes converging on one creative vision difficult, so we always have to be willing to compromise on certain things for the good of the song as a whole. It’s something we’re still trying to figure out, but that’s part of what makes the process so fun and interesting for us; it forces us to learn more about ourselves and each other in a weird, beautiful kind of way.
With Superbloom, it really felt like no one had sole creative control. Everyone was taking shifts on the computer, adding, tweaking, removing sounds, and changing melodies. An idea you had yesterday might sound completely different tomorrow after someone else had their turn. As a result, these songs are so much different than what any of us could have conjured up on our own, a sound that is truly unique to the five of us.
In regards to our musical backgrounds, we all grew up learning and listening to different things. Manas and Tanmay grew up singing Carnatic/Hindustani music; Marco picked up production and singing in high school; Srikar and Abhi learned a bunch of different instruments at young ages. We grew up listening to Indian classical music, Spanish music, hip-hop, R&B, indie rock, jazz and many more. All of those influences come through in our music in one way or another, whether it’s the Bollywood melody in 'GO!' or the 808’s and trap drums on 'Stop Me'.
You’ve mentioned in previous interviews that you want to be seen as more than just a “brown boy band.” As Indian and Cuban Americans, do you ever feel boxed in or tokenised because of your cultural identity?
There have definitely been times where it feels like individual people and the industry at large want to put us in that box, but I think we’ve been intentional about keeping ourselves out of it. We’re constantly trying new things and changing our sound, so it’s hard for people to even assign a genre to us, which we think is really cool. Growing up, we never had anybody who looked like us doing what we are doing now, so being able to represent our people in this way is definitely very cool. Seeing people enjoy our music and feel proud that we look like them makes it feel like we’re doing something bigger than just making music.
"Seeing people enjoy our music and feel proud that we look like them makes it feel like we’re doing something bigger than just making music."Manas and Srikar from Weston Estate for Homegrown
What do you hope your audiences walk away with when they leave your concerts? How does your approach to performing shift when you go from college audiences of 50-100 people to venues built for thousands?
We honestly just want people to walk away from our shows feeling like they had the best time and want to come back the next time we’re in their town. Someone once described our shows as watching your cousins on stage with microphones and instruments, which I find hilarious. We just try to let people escape their own problems for a little bit and get lost in the music. Playing for thousands of people is definitely a little different from the smaller venues we used to do, just because there are more people whose attention we need to hold. For the most part, though, seeing more people in the crowd gives us more energy on stage and it makes our performances more lively.
Weston Estate formed when you were all still in school. What comes next for Weston Estate now that you don’t have to balance college and boyband stardom anymore? What are your goals for the months and years to come?
After the EP, we really just want to start releasing a lot more music. We’ve been pretty sparse with our releases till now, but at this point, we just want to share more. Release music and just do more cool things; tours, vinyls, merch, festivals. After that, we’re gonna start working on our next project. We don’t know what it’s going to sound like yet, but it will be unlike anything we’ve put out in the past. We’re just as excited to discover that sound as the fans are to hear it.
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