Who are the four voices Naya Beat picked for round two?

Naya Beat is the Los Angeles archival label Filip Nikolic and Raghav Mani built around a simple curatorial question: whose South Asian diaspora dance records actually get a second life. Its catalog already runs through the 'Naya Beat Volume 1' and 'Volume 2' compilations and a reissue of Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album 'Punjabi Disco,' originally pressed in just 500 copies. 'Select: Remixes and Reworks 2,' out October 16, takes that archive a step further: four vocal tracks, four working producers, four new 12-inch style reworks. Woolfy vs Projections reworks Piya Malik's 'Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya.' Turbotito & Ragz rebuild Pallavi Sharda's 'Going Out Hoping To See You.' Thomaas Banks of Psychemagik takes on Pinky Ann Rihal's 'Tu Aaja.' And Dino Soccio of Pleasure of Love turns Asha Puthli and Say She She's 'Pawa!' into an extended disco mix. Mastering is by Nikolic himself, cut by Frank Merritt at The Carvery in London.

Why does it matter that Asha Puthli is still active?

It's easy to file Puthli next to the other three names here as an archival curiosity, a voice dug out of a crate. She isn't one. At 81, she toured through 2025, played Glastonbury, made her Los Angeles debut at Zebulon and returned to New York's Summerstage that July. In March 2026 she stood on the 'Saturday Night Live' stage with Gorillaz, Black Thought and Anoushka Shankar for 'The Moon Cave,' one of the oldest guests in the show's history. Piya Malik, Pallavi Sharda and Pinky Ann Rihal don't carry that same recognition outside crate-digging circles, which is exactly why putting all four on one tracklist is the interesting part.

"I'm very, very much in gratitude for all the crate-diggers, the samplers, the hip-hoppers," Puthli has said of the decades her catalog spent circulating through samples before archival labels caught up.

What does Naya Beat's curatorial philosophy actually argue?

The label's stated mission is about who gets reissued and whose experiments reach new audiences within dance music's wider story. Putting a still-touring legend on the same release as three names that have never been canonized argues all four deserve equal craft, not a two-tier treatment where one voice is "current" and the rest are history. That's also why the remixer list matters: Psychemagik, Permanent Vacation's Woolfy, Pleasure of Love's Dino Soccio are serious names in deep and organic house, not novelty acts cashing in on a sample pack.

Why it matters

For a label built on recovering overlooked South Asian diaspora dance music, putting a still-active artist alongside three never-canonized names tests whether "archival" house music treats its subjects as history to mine or as working artists owed continued attention.

What we think

Pairing Dino Soccio's disco mix of Puthli with three genuinely obscure names is the smartest move Naya Beat could make here. It's easy to build a reissue label around one legend; it's harder to get serious deep house producers to give equal craft to three vocalists nobody outside the digging scene has heard of. This EP does both, and the remixer list is proof the material earns it on its own terms, not as a novelty.