Listen to Wasia Project’s ethereal playlist to accompany The Cover

Wasia Project have shared an exclusive playlist to accompany the launch of this week’s NME Cover.

• READ MORE: Wasia Project: jazz-pop ballads to make your heart skip a beat

The duo – comprising siblings Olivia Hardy and Will Gao – appear on The Cover this week (November 20) as we renew our commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover, and the full interview with Wasia Project can be read here.

To celebrate, the band – who make exploratory, beautiful jazz-pop inspired by the classical training of their youth – have curated a playlist including some of their key inspirations, including Solange, Beach House and Sade. Listen to the full playlist below on Spotify, and here on Apple Music.

Last Wednesday (November 15), Wasia Project released ‘Remember When’, the latest drop in a run of singles they have put out throughout the year, from March’s ‘Petals In The Moon’ to the reflective ‘My Lover Is Sleeping’ which landed in the summer. “It’s a big song for me because it meant a lot when I was writing it,” Gao told NME. “I was really down about the pandemic and I didn’t realise how much I missed school, my friends and just being able to chat with people. And that made me think about the passage of time.”

Elsewhere in this week’s Cover interview, Gao and Hardy discussed ‘Ur So Pretty’, a highlight from last year’s debut EP ‘How Can I Pretend?’. The track recently soundtrack a key, emotional scene in season two of Netflix’s hit LGBTQ+ drama Heartstopper, in which Gao plays the role of Tao Xu. “It’s really cool to see people discovering us through the show,” he said.

Hardy added: “It’s a very sentimental song and I knew it would be used in a sentimental place in the show, but it was pretty amazing to see the way it was used.”

Read the full The Cover story with Wasia Project here.