Rising EDM artist SOUKHYA’s excitement is infectious when she talks about her recent experience in the JBL Music Academy. “The classes have helped me learn new things about myself as an artist and about the industry,” she says. It’s just one example of JBL‘s commitment to artists—both emerging and legacy acts.
For artists like SOUKHYA that support can be life changing. The Bay Area native grew up studying Indian Classical Music for 15 years. Her mom, also a singer, was her first music teacher. “As she was teaching me, she thought, ‘Oh there’s some talent here, let me put her in music classes,” she says. “I started singing in English, and I really loved performing English songs, so I started transitioning into that while also leaning more into the Bollywood space. In college, I joined the South Asian A Capella team, and in 2020, I started performing pop music covers and posting them on social media.”
That led to some incredible opportunities. SOUKHYA has performed the National Anthem for the NBA Warriors at the Chase Center with 20,000 fans in attendance and officially became the first Indian American Woman to sing the National Anthem for the NHL in 2020. She’s also appeared in two full-length movies and amassed a social media following of more than 500,000.
With a strong and diverse musical background, the sky is the limit for SOUKHYA, but the artist has chosen to hone in on EDM, the music that has become her passion, as she steps into this next era of her career. “The last two years I was experimenting with music and now I know the direction I’m going and that’s where I’ve been making most of my music,” she says.
Her laser focus was perfectly timed. In 2025 she was tapped to join the JBL Music Academy. The initiative is the iconic audio brand’s way of giving emerging artists a platform to discover and share their unique voices through music and self-expression. In 2025, that included a search for 10 U.S. artists that JBL could spotlight with a three-day event filled with industry-led panels, workshops and performances in Los Angeles. After that, The Academy linked up with award-winning EDM producer and DJ Martin Garrix to give 30 up-and-coming musicians, songwriters, singers and producers the chance to learn from music industry experts during a four-day program in Amsterdam. For SOUKHYA, the program felt more like an act of fate than an accidental accomplishment.
“I was tapping through Instagram stories, and I see an ad that says, ‘apply for the JBL Music Academy with Martin Garrix’ and the application was due that same day. I had this little intuition inside of me to apply for it,” she says. “Within a week, I found out that I was shortlisted in the U.S. I was like, ‘This is so crazy!’”
The craziest part? “I actually had Martin Garrix on my vision board for 2025,” she says. “I was so new into the dance EDM space and I really want to make music in that space and top line for producers, and this just reassured me, like, ‘Hey, like, you’re on the right path.’ When I woke up to the email that I was selected to go to Amsterdam, I called my whole family, and we just jumped around and screamed on the phone together. It’s been such a journey.”
“The JBL team is absolutely so amazing,” she continues. “They support us artists in so many ways. They want their artists to be heard, and they do everything that they can to support us. I mean, they’ve given me the opportunity to speak to Rolling Stone.”
Another such opportunity is her upcoming performance at SXSW in Austin, Texas, where JBL will partner with Rolling Stone to showcase new artists across multiple venues.
“I’ve had festivals on my vision board for the last two years, so having the chance to do this is just so exciting,” says SOUKHYA. “I am going to perform some unreleased music, and I think this will be a festival where I can showcase myself as a true dance EDM vocalist.”
Much like a pulsing EDM track, SOUKHYA’s years of dedication to her craft are all coming to a symphonic crescendo, and she couldn’t be more excited or more thankful. “JBL has been such a great partner to have and I’m so, so, so grateful to them.”
Catch SOUKHYA at SXSW alongside other JBL Music Academy artists including Chasyn, Kunle B, KCH, Calena and Gaddi. https://www.jbl.com/musicacademy
