For sibling musicians William Gao and Olivia Hardy, everything comes back to their family’s South London living room.
“There was this coffee table that we’d clear off and use as a stage as kids,” says Hardy, 19, the younger of the brother-sister duo. “And a CD player that was always playing Queen, Billy Joel…”
“The Beatles, ELO,” Gao, 21, adds.
“A lot of ABBA as well,” Hardy nods.
Their storytelling is effortless but exciting — thoughts and phrases passed between them with an ease that suggests they’ve been partners since, well, birth. “Music has always been a very, very big part of our lives,” Gao continues. Hardy agrees: “Looking back, I don’t think I even realized how big it was.”
As they lounge on CM’s conference room couch — munching on dried seaweed snacks and Diet Coke — it’s hard to believe they were performing for a full house just some hours before. Known jointly as Wasia Project (the name a nod to their mixed Chinese British heritage), Hardy and Gao have been making innovative indie-pop music together since 2019. Hardy sings lead vocals and Gao plays the keys, but their sound is a bit harder to define: “We usually say it’s a mix of classical, jazz and pop, but we’ve never really known how to place it,” Hardy admits. Gao explains:
“We both gravitate to lots of different types of music, but when we make our own, it’s what we’re making. It’s ours.”
This year has been Wasia Project’s biggest since they began, Gao tells me, fiddling with the fan-made hat draped around his shoulders. (“It’s just so cozy; I haven’t taken it off!” he beams.) After playing seven sold-out shows across the U.K. in February, they spent the spring supporting singer-songwriter…
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