The Wasia Project siblings on Laufey, Heartstopper, and their upcoming album Nocturne
On their recent stop in Hong Kong, the musicians spoke with Style about making an album they’re proud of, and what the term ‘Wasian’ means to them
In a recent interview in Hong Kong, Olivia Hardy, 21, and her brother Will Gao, 23, better known to some as Tao Xu from the hit series Heartstopper, acknowledged how their band name has “plummeted us into the conversation”, but seemed reluctant to engage with the discourse around the term without discussing the nuances around it. The duo is stopping by the city to perform an intimate, pared-back piano concert, to promote their latest single “Bleeding Gold” and debut album, Nocturne, releasing this September. The pair have always aimed to make music which transcends genres, cultures and even their name. “A name is a name,” as Gao says, “but music speaks the universal language.”
For Gao and Hardy, who were born and raised in south London and grew up making few but “formative” visits to see family from Beijing, being mixed-race is in fact a deeply personal topic, and one which they prefer to explore subtly and subliminally through their music. “Naturally, inherently, the in-betweenness of being [of] mixed heritage in any way is going to inform the way you create or just walk about life,” says Hardy. Writing music from their lived experience means they see cultural identity as more than just a punchline. “Anything that becomes this kind of shallow hype thing, I always find a bit trivial to the actual depth of what we’re discussing,” Hardy continues. “It can be dismissive of the actual people involved.”
“We toured for the whole of 2024 and then we came back and were like, ‘OK, we’ve got to make an album.’ Like who even are we? How do we do this?” Hardy laughs. The band started out very organically, releasing songs Hardy and Gao had written individually. This would be the first production that demanded full attention from each of them, who had previously been busy with acting (Gao), studying (Hardy) – and playing live shows.
“It was the first time we were doing something with intention,” says Hardy, who describes the experience as time-consuming and pressure-inducing. “An album’s a full body of work, a big marker of an artist’s identity. It’s a lot more high-stakes, in my mind, than an EP.” Gao is the playful yet pensive counterpart to his more forthright younger sister – who speaks her mind without hesitation – and he takes a moment to ruminate on an appropriate analogy for the situation. “It’s like being in a room with no air con and no windows! It’s really humid, like being in a room, sitting still too long, no airflow.”
The struggle, in some ways, was trying to bring structure to the siblings’ unbridled creative process – “Project” being the key word in the band’s name, to indicate a work in progress with no fixed boundaries, perimeters or limits. Or, in Hardy’s words, seeking out the in-betweenness of it all in a world where “we all tend to stick to boxes and absolutes”. The band is without a doubt a product of the digital age: they started out uploading their debut single to SoundCloud in 2019 before building a devoted, largely online cult following during the pandemic and using social media to connect with fans. Despite being children of the streaming generation, they’re certainly not immune to the pressures of it. The siblings face the same conundrum that confounds many indie artists – to succumb to the numbers game or stick to their own path as artists.