Sheherazaad announces her debut album Khudgarzi and shares Andhera

Sheherazaad has announced her first full-length album, Khudgarzi, and shared its lead single "Andhera". The Line of Best Fit reported the news on September 1. The record is out on 20 November through Erased Tapes and is tracked on the release calendar.

The composer and theatre artist follows her 2024 EP Qasr with a set of songs written after a broken engagement, carrying what she describes as a mix of rage, guilt and grief. The album's title translates as selfishness, and that idea sits at its centre.

"Selfishness became a kind of silent prayer," she said, calling it a portal into a haunted universe of anxieties and desires. She added that she was made to fear a selfish kind of woman, and that embracing one felt like walking into a forest she had been running from.

"Andhera" translates as darkness and has been described as a Bolly-goth pop hymn. Sheherazaad wrote it after meeting the love of her life, when romantic gloom was still coming out of her, and largely composed it in an ex's coat closet while trying to keep the volume down.

The album was recorded between Brooklyn, London and the San Francisco Bay Area, with parts arriving from Istanbul, Islamabad and Trivandrum. More than thirty musicians contributed, among them Ria Modak, Sarathy Korwar and Qasim Naqvi.

Its palette widens her earlier work, building on folk and dark-pop textures with Hindustani, Turkish, Arabic and Carnatic instrumentation, plus recordings of weather, breath and echoes. The ten tracks run from "Qatil (Murderess)" to a second version of "Haqeeqat (Reality)", and the release joins a run of indie debuts logged here including Sofish's Femme Illustree and Six Sex's Ultra.