New Delhi’s Kukubh is, in his words, ‘a common man blessed enough to write and play to my heart's content’. In artistic terms, that points directly towards acoustic guitars, flannels, beards and indie music. His new single ‘Nawab’ is emphatically that. That would be rather shallow and one-dimensional if it turned out that he was not honest, unassuming and a confident songwriter. But he is.

‘Nawab’ is a song that relies on its skeleton. There isn’t much to read into here musically, but that’s the aesthetic (and so many other artists) he is going for. There is an acoustic guitar whose chords are pretty much the only thing backing his very rootsy vocals. The drums in 7/8 time add a folksy feel to the song; a lot of traditional Indian music uses odd times, so in contexts like this it’s not super jarring. Probably the best thing about ‘Nawab’ is that there isn’t much more to say, really. Yes, his vocals are relatively simple and quiet and his messaging and subject matter is equally so. But there’s nothing more to dive into. This track is a quintessential example of ‘what you see is what you get’. You want something murky hiding under the surface, some added layers of instrumentation or basically anything to read into? This is not the place to look. In very sparse, simple and direct music like this, the line between a lack of effort and confidence is pretty thin and difficult to concretely find. Kukubh seems to be on the right side of it.