By Supriya Savkoor
Siddhartha Khosla of Goldspot at Hard Rock Cafe
in Bangalore, India, in early 2012.
(Photo credit: Sohanmaheshwar)
Death Cab for Cutie meets Kishore Kumar meets the Beatles meets The Smiths meets … contemporary indie pop-rock meets 1960s Bollywood nostalgia. Yes, there’s an American band that’s all that and more. You may not have heard of Goldspot, but chances are, you’ve heard one, maybe more, of their songs. They’ve released two albums (are they still called albums?) with another one to be released this summer, and they’re featured in everything from films starring the likes of Reese Witherspoon, Vince Vaughn, Aasif Mandvi (of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart fame), and Kate Hudson… in all different movies; commercials for Apple’s iPad, eBay, and Chrysler; and popular television shows such as How I Met Your Mother and The O.C. The group has both fronted and played in music festivals with the likes of Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, Bon Jovi, and, of course, Death Cab for Cutie. They’ve won numerous awards, been featured on NPR, and were named by the UK’s Sunday Times as “the best band to come out of America in years.” Taking its name after India’s equivalent of a fizzy orange Fanta, Goldspot is fronted by its Indian-American creator and songwriter Siddhartha (Sid) Khosla, who was born and raised in New Jersey and grew up on a steady dose of Hindi film songs from the 1950s and 1960s.
