Attakkari Talks “Kalyani Drip”, Girlhood & The Future Of Indian Electronic Music

Nandini Sree, the Kerala-based DJ and producer better known as Attakkari, wanted to be a dancer when she was young. Once she was old enough to go clubbing, she started spending entire nights dancing and got curious about the person behind the decks. When she moved to Kerala from Dubai, where she was brought up, she started studying DJing while working as an RJ, initially playing a lot of commercial music, hip-hop and Bollywood. She then moved into EDM when big-room electro sounds were huge. Her first introduction to electronic music was actually through her DJ classes, where the four-to-the-floor beats initially felt boring after growing up with the diverse rhythms of Bollywood, Tamil music and hip-hop. The more she listened, though, the more its musicality and structure made sense, sending her deeper into different kinds of electronic music. “I think where my real joy lies is tech house,” she says, even as she now finds herself moving towards techno.

You’ll find a lot of Indian and Middle Eastern sounds in her set today — but with samples and instrumentals — “it’s not Bollywood Tech house though, that’s not what I play,” she distinguishes. Latin and Afro influences, darker sounds and more hypnotic elements also find a way into her set depending on the crowd and the venue. Producing her own tracks has also changed the way Nandini listens to music, opening her up to sounds she never really understood or liked before. The artist just released the music video for her debut single ‘Kalyani Drip’ featuring singer-songwriter Akshaarah.

The collaboration grew out of a friendship that began in London in 2021, when Nandini saw Akshaarah perform at a stage show shortly after moving to the UK as a student. Drawn to her voice and stage presence, she wanted to get to know her, and the two quickly bonded over a shared love for music and raves. “We had no idea partying together so hard would lead us to make a party anthem,” she says. When the time came to make her first original track, Akshaarah was the obvious choice. Trained in Carnatic music since the age of four, with influences stretching from Carnatic and R&B to electronic music and Punjabi garage, she understood the cross-genre direction Nandini had envisioned. Kalyani Raga, that Akshaarah had been drawn to since a young age for its radiant, uplifting nature, felt perfect for the track. Experimenting with swaras, aalaaps, some English phrases, and konnakkol followed through.

The artists wanted to make a Carnatic tech-house track that felt joyful and rooted in girlhood. Its lyrics come from a Sanskrit shloka traditionally describing a woman’s beauty, but in the track, it is divorced from the male gaze and turned into a celebration of sisterhood, sung by women for other women. For Nandini, tech house felt like the ideal space for this experiment because the genre leaves room for analogue sounds alongside electronic production. The track's synths were designed to carry the warmth of Indian instruments, while tavil rhythms were woven into the percussion. That same spirit carries into the music video, which centres ordinary Kerala women with different skin tones, body types and appearances. Directed by Shaima, the video is filled with girls laughing, dancing, loitering, drinking chai and taking up space. Even the two male characters appear adorned with jewellery and presented through their feminine side. Nandini describes it as “a utopian vision of a world of girls.”

Attakkari is already working on her next track, this time a drum and bass number. Among the artists she admires and hopes to work with are SickFlip, Parimal Shais and Siva Prayojan. Smokey in particular has been an important figure for Nandini, as the first female electronic music producer she met in person and someone she has always looked up to. When it comes to collaborations, though, she is more interested in working with local musicians and artists whose work she feels has been overlooked. She is currently planning a track with the Hindustani singer Srinath Nair, and her upcoming DnB track features a Kathakali song sung by Kanchana. She would also like to work with Rajasthani and Tamil folk singers, drawing from the range of folk and cultural forms around her that she believes have a lot of untapped potential. “Electronic music is a way to open up these sounds to the global stage,” she notes.

Follow Attakkari here, Akshaarah here and watch the music video below:

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