Sharada Shashidhar is a Los Angeles based vocalist, composer & producer. Her soulful voice takes inspiration from jazz and Indian classical music, which influences her songwriting and productions. Shashidhar’s elaborate harmonies and vocal creativity come together in a new beat-orientated spiritual jazz. 

Sharada has an extensive resume as a collaborator in the Los Angeles experimental jazz scene and has performed across the US and EU in spaces such as Le Guess Who? Festival, Badehaus Berlin, Public Records, Solar Myth, and Zebulon. Over the years, she has collaborated with the likes of Nightmares on Wax, Carlos Niño, Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra, and Zeroh. Her 2024 release on Leaving Records, Soft Echoes, was a bold step forward, marking her first release as a bandleader. The album received praise from Bandcamp Daily, The Guardian, and Mojo Magazine, and was named one of the Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2024 by Gilles Peterson and Worldwide.FM. Her forthcoming album, A Foot on the Ground, is due out via Colorfield Records in June 2026. To Shashidhar, this body of work feels like a “documentation of instinct and a challenge to mentally free herself” of preconceived notions from the past.

Recorded over the course of two years at Lucy’s Meat Market in Los Angeles, A Foot on the Ground found Shashidhar playing into new roles and experimenting with tools and instruments she previously did not have access to. Through her work with producer Pete Min, she was often pushed to look at her songwriting through a new lens. In recording the album, she felt that her perfectionism had to take a back seat, realizing there was something of value and an inherent musicality in everything she did, even if it felt momentarily silly or scary. These takes were reshaped until they felt true and complete, much like a collage or a sculpture. Shashidhar moved through different musical styles, not necessarily to prove her range, but to move away from flattening her ideas into singularity. She was joined by skilled friends (Caleb Buchanan, Timothy Angulo, Devin Daniels) as well as new collaborators (Mark Guiliana and Benny Bock), who helped flesh out ideas and share their perspectives. The record was created without a specific roadmap in mind, but was instead created in the room collaboratively, allowing everything that felt relevant on a given day to surface naturally.

Listening to A Foot on the Ground is intended to leave people feeling whole and satiated, akin to the feeling after indulging in a great meal. Sharada hopes the listener will “come away feeling like at least one aspect of me could be seen in them. I want it to excite someone into trying something new. If they listen a second or a third time, they get to see a new focal point and it sounds completely different. I want them to feel challenged but still comforted like there is a familiarity to these songs.”