After a long journey to the Ziro Festival of Music in Arunachal Pradesh, Bengaluru artiste Rudy Mukta (who goes by Rudy as an artiste) got on stage with her band for the first time on September 27, debuting new songs and new versions of songs. While Ziro does get cool in September, it was sunny when Rudy made her entrance on the bamboo stage wearing a long, hooded coat, which she soon realised it was too hot for.
Running through songs with her band comprising bassist Niya Rose, drummer Rhema George and keyboardist Leeanne Besterwitch, Rudy performed ‘Morbid Bop,’ ‘Weathering,’ ‘Checkmate,’ ‘Time’ and more. Among them was ‘Funny,’ the first song Rudy ever made and ‘Love & Limerence,’ the latest she released via Universal Music India’s imprint IndieA on September 9. By the end, an attendee even got on stage to offer her a bouquet, much to everyone’s bewilderment.
A week prior to performing at Ziro, Rudy spoke to The Hindu about a reinvention of her music, her visual aesthetic with the ‘Love & Limerence’ music video and playing live. Last year, Rudy graduated from Bengaluru’s Mount Carmel College, majoring in economics and sociology. “Suddenly, I have so much time and it’s good. I’m slowly centered and getting into a routine. In the beginning, it was I was, ‘Oh my God, now my life is in my hands and I have to do something with it’,” she says over a call.
It was soon after she graduated that she and her longtime producer Kalmi — who many know as the beatmaker for Hanumankind’s breakout hit ‘Big Dawgs’ — got together for sessions in Hyderabad and came up with ‘Love & Limerence,’ an R&B/pop song that is emotionally heavy and builds up in sonic intensity as it goes. Rudy recalls, “He wrote a piano piece, and I just sang over it, and it came to be. We posted on Instagram right after we made it. After that, we built on it with the production and everything else.”
Bengaluru musician Rudy
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As regular collaborators — Kalmi also worked on Rudy’s 2021 EP Broke My Slumber , the singer-songwriter says they have both arrived at a “mature sound” with ‘Love & Limerence’ and current material. He also called on Rudy to contribute vocals to Hanumankind’s ‘Cause’ from his recent mixtape Monsoon Season.
The creative process between them has often been about “making new sounds” without thinking about whether it will be material they have to release, Rudy notes. “It is because we spent so much time making new sounds and not dropping them for a certain amount of time, that I was just excited to put things out at one point.”
The title of her new song, specifically “limerence” came from Rudy’s habit of noting down “cool words or phrases” whenever she comes across them. She says, “I jot them down in my Notes app, and leave it for later. Then, when I sit down to write, I’ll pick it up and think, ‘I like this, let me build on it. I am going to come up with a concept around it.’ I think a reel mentioned limerence, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is such a nice word’.”
The haunting, seemingly goth-inspired music video directed by Deepika Menon (her directorial debut, Rudy reminds us) with Lendrick Kumar as executive producer is a deep dive into the artiste’s psyche as she grapples with love, longing and emotional distance. Rudy says, “This was my first major music video with a full-fledged set and a crew. I learned a lot by being on set and was inspired after seeing everyone be so good at what they do there. They made the whole process easy and comfortable.”
After Ziro Festival of Music, Rudy is heading to Lollapalooza India in Mumbai on January 25, 2026. Previously only performing solo, she says there is now more freedom with having a band, more so an all-girl band.
“We get to experiment with ideas that aren’t in the studio version of the song. I am able to add to certain pockets and make it more high energy, for instance, changing the groove somewhere in the middle. It is super fun,” she says.
In the run up to the next festival performance, Rudy says there may or may not be more new songs. “Let’s see. Ideally, I would like to drop some, but if not, there still is music being made, and there still is music waiting to come out.”
Published – October 02, 2025 09:28 pm IST
