With a clear, warm voice and haunting arrangements, Ditty creates an intimate soundscape. Between singing and recitation, accompanied by delicate fingerpicking, keyboard sounds and natural noises, she is reminiscent of Laurie Anderson and Patti Smith.

The word “Ditty” could be translated into German as “Liedchen” - but Aditi “Ditty” Veena, who was born and raised in New Delhi, does not warble nice trivialities. Instead, the artist and climate protection activist deals with the “inseparable connection between music and nature”, writing “gentle and poetic protest songs that urge us to take better care of our planet - and ourselves.”

She delivers her lyrics in a calm, clear voice, switching from reciting to singing and back again. Laurie Anderson comes to mind, Kae Tempest or Patti Smith. Ditty dresses her songs in sparse, very haunting arrangements that create a lot of intimacy and suit her warm voice very well.

Alongside delicate fingerpicking on the acoustic guitar and restrained keyboard sounds, you can also hear birds singing, the sound of the sea or the occasional cricket.

Ditty has been living in Berlin since 2022 and has gathered a top-class band around him with drummer Andi Haberl (The Notwist) and Johannes Weber (Ilgen Nur, Jungstötter).

However, she recorded the five songs on her new EP “Skin” (Clouds Hill Records) in various places in her Indian homeland, whose musical tradition influenced the Beatles, for example, over half a century ago, and whose peculiarities have also shaped the thirty-something: “I grew up in a colonized country,” she explains, “where I speak two languages and have a contradictory coexistence.