The multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Cat Mahatta describes her music as “electronic space pop r&b,” and through that music she hopes to create a dreamscape where folks with marginalized identities can live and dance in exhilaration. Her new music video, “Hymn to Dudes,” pairs ethereal beats with forceful lyrics about independence and non-conformism. The music swells … Read More
British-Indian musician Reeta Loi, aka LOIAL, dropped her latest track “Too Late” today. Echoing vocals layer over a painted animation to produce a haunting, hypnotic piece of art. This song follows you and tracks you down, pinning your feelings under its assertive hook, “I’m not lost. I found my way. I’m moving on from yesterday.” … Read More
DJ and musician Mena Sachdev, who goes by Ushamami on stage, premiered their new music video for “Jinx” with Dazed last week. With a very 80s inspired melody and gorgeous, decidedly queer visuals, “Jinx” is a song to find comfort in. While the chorus croons “she loves you bad, don’t turn away,” images of intimacy … Read More
Dove is a bestselling novel by Robin Lee Graham, a non-fiction narrative about sailing solo around the world at 16 years old, starting from San Pedro, California. It ends like a fairytale: he returns home with a wife and a daughter. I read it as part of my middle school curriculum and was so taken … Read More
Artist Diaspoura, aka Anjali Naik, premiered the music video for her song “Glisten” on Nylon today. The video is a gorgeous trek through the wildlands of South Carolina, showing tenderness and biting edge in equal measure. “[Liberals on the sidelines] can see our tears and our sweat and how we gloss ourselves up and move … Read More
Eight men were murdered in Toronto, their bodies dismembered and placed into more than dozen fiberglass garden planters on a residential property on Mallory Crescent. This was the same Leaside neighborhood where self-employed landscaper and occasional mall Santa Bruce McArthur worked. Fragments of bodies were found in a wooded area adjacent to the property as … Read More
As a girl and then as a woman, Eid has always been the same. My mother and I rise hours before the other half of our household, brushing, dabbing, smoothing, and painting ourselves before dressing in the clothing she has picked. There are janamaaz laid out on the plastic turf in an Indiana high school … Read More
In Marriage of a Thousand Lies, Lucky, the restless romantic, ruminates on queerness and notes that, “most people think the closet is a small room. They think you can touch the wall, touch the door, turn the handle, and walk free. But when you’re inside it, the closet is so vast. No walls, no doors, just empty darkness stretching … Read More
Here’s an introduction to South Asian queens who deserve all the praise in the world, but are rarely celebrated. As a scholar of queer South Asian nightlife and performance, I am regularly asked, “But Kareem, why hasn’t there been a South Asian queen on Drag Race?” Not that RuPaul’s Drag Race has to be the … Read More
