Vaakkath

Singer, musician, actor and model Haniya Nafisa frequently marches to her own drumbeat. Over the past few years, the artist from Kerala has been slowly experimenting with an array of genres, sounds and styles, as is clearly evident in her 2026 debut album Vaakkath. The road she’s taken to get to this LP has included crafting viral covers, releasing hit singles like 2024’s “Mulchedi”—an intimate track with singer-composer Govind Vasantha that marked her arrival as a dynamic independent artist—acting in Tamil and Telugu film roles and crooning for a handful of Malayalam movies. Vaakkath sees Nafisa honing her instincts as a singer, indie songwriter and producer, with much sonic experimentation along the way that often serves to highlight her oh-so-sweet vocals. She also explicitly writes lyrics using her native Kannur dialect, defying conventional pressures to use standardised language. Nafisa has said she makes music that she wants to listen to herself—so she must adore listening to tracks that channel raw vulnerability and buried rage, because Vaakkath has this in spades. The album deftly moves from glossy, energetic songs like “Nattamthiri” (with Malayalam hitmaker M.H.R) and “Koottam” to rawer, more confessional territory on tunes like “1/2 Dashakam” and “Njan aarayi?”. Pain, identity, the passage of time—the artist muses on a smorgasbord of emotions as the listener waits for the next musical twist or thoughtful reflection to arrive. Fittingly, the LP closes on “Adakkam”, a song about refusing to be made into a “smaller” version of yourself. Its title is drawn from a Malayalam word that can mean “restraint, silence or suppression” and it ends Vaakkath on a sublimely defiant note. Here, Nafisa takes us through her album, track by track.... “Thudakkam” “The opening song records my transition as an artist from one genre to another, moving through different artistic spaces. It features a glimpse of my first single, ‘Mulchedi’, which shaped and set my indie journ