Olivia Rodrigo Hand-Picks Med-Student Musician Quiet Light for New Festival
Texas producer and singer Riya Mahesh, who records under the name Quiet Light, has been personally selected by Olivia Rodrigo to play the pop star's newly launched festival Daisy Chain Fields — set to be the biggest show of Mahesh's career so far. The booking comes as she's still completing clinical rotations at an East Coast medical school, working hospital shifts by day and driving to a dance studio to rehearse by night. Her mixtape Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2, released in April, also announced her signing to the label True Panther. The details come from an NME cover interview.
Hospital by day, rehearsal by night
Speaking to NME right after a hospital shift, Mahesh described her current life as "9 to 5" followed by "5 to 11" — the first at the hospital, the second at a dance studio prepping for the festival. She took a leave from school last year to focus on music and is now back finishing her remaining coursework.
None of her hospital colleagues know about her music career. "Still nobody knows," she told NME, agreeing with comparisons to Hannah Montana after months of working alongside coworkers under a hidden identity. She spoke about the weight of hospital work — the stakes are high, personal life doesn't factor into the equation, and showing up each day purely to serve others is "very humbling."
She doesn't have a formula for balancing both worlds, saying she just tries to stay grounded and take it day by day. But one thing isn't in question: "I've been making music my whole life and I'm never going to stop." Whether or not it pays the bills, she says, music will remain the most constant thing in her life.
From self-taught production to True Panther
Mahesh taught herself production during the pandemic and has since released music independently and prolifically as Quiet Light, describing her songs as "dream sequences" — a delicate blend of folk, alt-pop and ambient textures.
Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2, out in April, doubled as the announcement of her signing to True Panther, a label whose roster includes Oklou, Grace Ives and Model/Actriz. She describes music shifting from a side pursuit to an actual job as a change that's "pretty crazy" in itself.
Dallas, sitar and David Lynch
Mahesh grew up in an Indian family in Dallas, Texas, which she calls "the most suburban place you could imagine," and found an outlet through music and art. She's drawn to David Lynch and The Virgin Suicides for their shared insistence that there's always more beneath a calm surface.
Her high school life, by contrast, was fairly "normcore" — crushing on boys, watching football games, being crowned homecoming queen, which she jokingly calls "very Friday Night Lights." Underneath that was solid classical training: her mother is an accomplished sitar player, and she started piano at age four, which she now looks back on as "one of the most rewarding educational experiences" of her life.
That instinct to hold multiple identities at once extends into her broader beliefs. She thinks people are too fixated on left-brain/right-brain binaries — for instance, the assumption that musicians aren't good at math — "but music theory and production are deeply rooted in math." Drop the bias, she says, and "everything is far more connected than we think."
The full lineup and dates for Daisy Chain Fields have not yet been announced by organizers.