The state of North Carolina has produced some great artists in many different genres, such as J. Cole, Tori Amos, and even two American Idol winners. However, Weston Estate has to take the cake for the best lo-fi pop artists in their home state, and perhaps even the whole country. Their name references a neighborhood in Cary, North Carolina, where the members grew up. The band consists of five members: Tanmay Joshi, Manas Panchavati, Marco Luka, Srikar Nanduri and Abhi Manhass. Even through the group was created when they were in high school, they have stayed close in college and continue to release some of the chillest beats to grace anybody's Spotify playlist.
Weston Estate currently has four released songs on Spotify, each of them slightly different in style and composition. Their breakout hit was the song Cotton Candy, which, as of now, has more than 2.6 million streams on Spotify alone. Their other releases gained popularity with Cotton Candy as well, with Hypnotized and Fresh Air gaining millions of streams as well. The band was able to collaborate with artist Maasho to produce Fresh Air, and the mix of their styles is breathtaking.
Joshi, Panchavati and Luka are the band's vocalists, Nanduri is their guitarist, and Manhass rocks the bass and produces their songs. They tend to write lyrics and compose music together, but the time it takes for them to write and produce a song varies greatly.
"With Hypnotized, Marco and Tanmay wrote the song and recorded it within 24 hours. But with a song like Close the Door, it took much longer. All in all that song took around five months to get completely done," Nanduri said.
Comparatively, the composition styles of Hypnotized and Close the Door are very different. Whereas Hypnotized takes much more lo-fi influences with it's R&B-pop vocal score, Close the Door has much less variation in rhythm and less surprises in terms of vocal range. They both draw from similar influences in both lo-fi and pop, but in slightly contrasting ways.
The boyband's members currently attend the schools University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, and Duke University. While they remain in relatively close proximity, they all have different schedules and working together on everything can be difficult.
"It's gotten a little bit harder because we aren't all in the same place giving each other immediate feedback and being in a constant state of workflow. Everyone is working on different schedules, so that sometimes makes things more difficult but we work in the best way we can in the circumstances we're in. That usually means a lot of FaceTime calls and audio files filling up our group chat at different times throughout the day," Nanduri said.
With the amount of time energy these guys put into their songs, it's no surprise that so many have started becoming fans. Their dedication is admirable, as is their self-production. From coast to coast, Weston Estate is becoming a more widely known band, and it's no stretch to say that anyone who thinks they have good music taste should go take a listen to their amazing releases. Luka also has a bit of a solo career of his own, so take a listen to his music as well.
Any of Weston Estate's song make you wish you could listen to it again for the first time, and their range of style, charisma, and artistic talent are incomparable in the world of lo-fi pop. They call themselves "ya aunty's favorite boyband," and they're about to take the music industry by storm.
