The last time we heard from Madame Gandhi was via her effervescent, self-reflective album Vibrations (Sony Masterworks, 2022). She had emerged from the pandemic, having spent time in homebound introspection, even earning a master’s degree in Music, Science, and Technology from Stanford University.
In contrast, for her follow-up, the rhythmic, eclectic, contact-high of Let Me Be Water (We Make Noise, May 2025), she quite literally traveled to the ends of the world — the Arctic Circle and Antarctica. There, she recorded the sounds of glaciers melting with hydrophones she had built at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. “I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from nature,” she explains. “This is about realizing that we are nature.”
Kiran “Madame” Gandhi — who began as a percussionist for M.I.A, before exploding into a genre-defying musical artist — has navigated many paths to get to this place of peace. A decade ago, her free-bleeding London Marathon run went viral, challenging stigmas around menstruation. Five years later, she delivered a mainstage TED Talk (“Why We Must Stop Dancing to the Sound of Our Own Oppression”) which elucidated her music-activism and gained millions of views online. Shortly after, the video for her song “Waiting For Me” won a Jury Award at SXSW 2021. In between, she toured with Daybreaker opening Oprah’s stadium tour, and her music was featured on Gutsy, Hillary Clinton’s AppleTV+ series, and Netflix’s Never Have I Ever. Recently, she received the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame Abe Olman Prize and was elected governor of her local Grammy chapter, championing unsung talent. Looking back, it’s clear Kiran has incrementally lived up to her name, which means “ray of light” in Sanskrit.
Inspiration is a living, breathing, evolving entity for this cultural force who resides between Los Angeles and London. Let Me Be Water, in kind, represents an artistic transformation for her: The album is an appreciation of the grandeur of nature, but also our collective role in this greater force. “It is about flow,” she says. “It is about acceptance. It is about existing without pushback.” And that is how Let Me Be Water became the ultimate act of collaboration: Though co-produced and performed by Gandhi, it was actually composed by 40 women and gender-expansive creatives.
Its opener, the percolating “Let Me Be Water,” is a deceivingly effortless track that mingles spoken-word samples and mantra-like house vocals with the aforementioned audio of melting glaciers. (Gandhi is no stranger to this aesthetic, having recorded “In Purpose,” a track composed of natural sounds, for EarthPercent, a charity co-founded by Brian Eno to raise funds for environmental causes.) “The song is absolutely a reference to climate, to protecting the planet,” she explains. “‘Let me be water’ — let’s identify that we are all one with nature.”
The idea of unifying several musical perspectives into one album came to her after leading a pair of songwriting camps with We Make Noise, an organization and label founded by Erin Barra that’s devoted to gender equity in music. Barra invited Gandhi to mentor the teams of artists first in 2023 at The Music District in Colorado, then several months later at Arizona State University. (Alicia Key’s women-in-music organization She Is the Music as well as the nonprofit Salt Lick Incubator helped fund the effort.) Gandhi was asked to record only the winning song, she says, “But after the vibe, camaraderie, and positive energy of the experience, I decided to honor the efforts of all 10 teams and make it into a 10-song album.” She tapped Colby Lapolla from the camp to co-produce the album with her and further develop the songs.
Inclusiveness drove the We Make Noise sessions: Be electric and percussive, while being uplifting and thoughtful, prioritizing lyrics with consciousness. The resulting music not only reflects these women galvanizing, but also a desire to transmit that energy to whomever is listening. For instance, the winning song, the worldly anthem “Rise!” is a self-affirmation that doubles as a call to action. Meanwhile, the pop single “Take Your Time!” captures the ethos of introspection and manifestation that comes from taking those bold steps. In 2018, a USC report found that only 2% of producers are women, which means it is likely that an even smaller percentage identify as trans or gender non-conforming. This album serves as a direct response to combating this underwhelming statistic.
To set intentions each morning, Gandhi would lead the 40 songwriters in meditation, journaling, and gentle yoga movement. “It was experimental and cool,” she says. “We looked at themes around using your purpose and passion to make a difference in the world. We looked at what it means to be aware of others, and how does that play out?” Let Me Be Water clocks in at a little over 20 minutes, the same amount of time she spends each morning meditating. “You can dance, you can celebrate, you can work out, you can get your day going,” she says. “It is made with the intention of making the audience feel uplifted and empowered, and to celebrate the spirit of love.”
A part of Let Me Be Water was inspired by Gandhi’s romantic partner, Team GB gold-medalist boxer Lesley Sackey, whom she unofficially married at Burning Man in 2023. Sackey teaches boxing to domestic violence survivors as a type of therapy and encouraged Gandhi to step into the ring for the first time, too. For three months, Gandhi trained with a team of 10 women under Sackey’s coaching, and went on to win a fight in London in 2024. The experience was so transformative that the album’s first single is the paean to the sport: “Pisces Knockout” is an agile, auto-tuned track produced by Colby Lapolla paced to a steady flow of power-hook shots and Indian Sarangi. “The song is about unmasking, about fighting the powers that keep us eating poorly and consuming harmful substances,” says Gandhi, who also became vegan and stopped drinking alcohol in recent years, “advertising and marketing that keep us addicted to many different things.”
She found boxing to be an expression of “personal power and strength, stamina and commitment.” To that end, the set of photographs (shot by Lindsey Byrnes) for Let Me Be Water is inspired by the famous Life magazine photos of Muhammad Ali training underwater. She hopes the steadied liberation woven throughout Let Me Be Water will prove contagious. “I do feel very much like a butterfly out of the cocoon on the other side. I feel more in my power energy,” she says. “And when we show up for ourselves, it ends up being medicine for others.”
