MUMBAI: "I packed my bag and decided to shift to Mumbai from Pune as I was getting more projects here," said the Kaushik Shukla, vocalist of the band Kaushik and The Southpaws. The move was in a way, helpful for the musician, who has now written a song titled 'Close to my Heart', inspired by the city of Pune and is part of the new EP.

'Close to my Heart' is a soft number that displays strong influences of Coldplay and John Mayer. The upcoming EP is scheduled to release in June or July this year. Speaking about the EP Shukla said, "We started working on it last year. It will have one Hindi and three English tracks." The three tracks in English have been written by Shukla, while the Hindi track has been penned by Gaurav Parab. Another track 'Smells like Bombay' is inspired by various characters in Mumbai and compares the city to various personalities, while 'I Can't Have Enough of You' which is a romantic track inspired by The Beatles. The band also plans to release one music video soon, Shukla revealed.

The EP will be launched in Pune and Mumbai, claimed Shukla, citing his association with both cities. "We have not planned any tour for the new releases but we have been playing our new tracks during various live gigs and at the Red Live digital platform, and we have got go responses for the same," he added.

The four-member band 'Kaushik and The Southpaws' consists of vocalist and keyboardist Shukla, bassist and backing vocalist Vinay Rao, guitarist Bhushan Chitnis and percussionist Anurag Sawangikar. Rao, Chitnis and Sawangikar are all left-handed, which is why the sporting term Southpaw is part of the band's name.

As a band, the quartet listens to different kinds of music from Norah Jones to John Mayer and Pink Floyd to The Beatles. Among Indian artistes, Nikhil D'Souza is a favourite for the band. "I admire him a lot and I would like to work with him someday. Other than Nikhil, I am open with working with producers who like my musical work," said Shukla. Like many other musicians, he hopes to be able to work with Bollywood musicians AR Rahman and Vishal Dadlani, who also have worked in the Indie space. Kaushik and The Southpaws is signed by Artist Aloud and was recently seen playing for Red Bandstand.

Shukla's 20 years training in Indian classical music, has helped him "write music" and he hopes to create more fusion tracks in the future. Individually, he is working on other projects like singing for documentary films and other projects.