Punjabi artist Riar Saab lives by a few guiding principles when it comes to making music—and one of these rules is that his tracks should be based on real life. “I don’t like [writing about] imaginary things,” he tells Apple Music. The artist (aka Tarun Singh Surjeet Singh Riyar) certainly covers a plethora of themes and ideas on his debut EP, How I Love, from friends in distress and his own mortality to the dreams he’s conjured up over the years, deep within his subconscious. Saab’s first big hit from 2022, “Obsessed”, also appears on this five-track record. Following the viral success of the drill-influenced Punjabi song—crafted alongside musician-producer Abhijay Sharma—Saab spent some eight months with an array of producers to create the other four tracks on How I Love. And the EP does exactly as the title suggests, exploring love in all its guises—platonic, romantic and everything in between. “There’s a personal message behind each of these songs,” he says. It’s an EP made for the dance floor, too. If the synth-laced grooves of opener “Dreams” (made with producer Hashbass) don’t get those toes tapping, then “Secrets”—a collab with Punjabi-Canadian singer-songwriter Kunwarr and producer Flamboy Beatz—surely will. And the lo-fi emo-of “Midnight”—created with Stunnah Beatz—is bound to get arms swaying in the air. Saab plays with tempo throughout How I Love and he carries a feel-good ambience across each track. He teams up again with Hashbass for “Feelings”, the EP’s choppy centrepiece, and closes with “Obsessed”—that sure-fire bop that has garnered millions of fans worldwide including Bollywood actor Vicky Kaushal, who shared the track on his socials in 2022 and helped it go viral. Here, Saab walks Apple Music through each of the five songs on How I Love, discussing his intentions track by track. “Dreams” “This is my personal favourite track on the EP. We were going to do a session, Hashbass and I, but before that, I had a dream. I didn’t second-guess myself and named the song ‘Dreams’. The thing with dreams is that they come to you unexpectedly. I was in a world where there was a castle, and an angel—a dream girl—there. I was flying too, on wings and roaming around. You can hear that in the hook: I’m saying that I’m close to you as long as I’m around. In the song I say that until my dream is over or my sleep breaks, let me tell you my heart’s message. “Half of the track is according to this dream but in another dream I had, I got shot. I write about this in four lines, where I want to give closure to the close ones in my life, including my mom and dad and the people I talk to on a daily basis. I tell them that as long as I’m living, I’ll do a lot for you—everything [to the best of my ability]. But in case something happens to me, I’m asking them to talk to my soul like we used to talk and share things every day.” “Secrets” “Kunwarr had come down to India and before he left, we met randomly in the studio. I’d known him before and we’d spoken over Instagram, so we chilled and didn’t even talk about making music. We spoke for quite a while and he said later, ‘Bro, I’m leaving soon so let’s meet and see what happens.’ In one studio session, we made three tracks. We had a few tracks but finished this track and put it out. It’s called ‘Secrets’ because there are some things—whether you’re in a relationship or you’re a man or a woman—[that people] aren’t able to express in the way they want. So, it’s called ‘Secrets’ because the song expresses the feelings we’re not able to express in a conversation.” “Midnight” “This is quite a personal story, based on a real incident. My close friend was involved in an accident. We’d gone somewhere as a group of friends and when we came back home to Bombay, she had an accident. It was the amavas (new moon) night—a lot of people believe in miracles and I’m one of them—so I was telling her to please get home soon and not to stay out too late partying because it’s not safe. “On her way back home, this accident happened and her phone was misplaced. I was trying to contact her all night, getting the feeling that something had happened. That’s what I’m saying on the track: that I’m thinking about her and I couldn’t sleep [as I was] hoping she was okay. She never found her phone from that night, so she called me from a friend’s phone and that’s the voice note that’s in [the track]. She sent me a photo from there too—that’s where some of the lyrics came from.” “Feelings” “Hashbass said we should do another song. We had a lot of fun sessions going on anyway. I never need to tell him much at all because he gets me. The beat for ‘Feelings’ was different, though; I’ve never worked on something like this. It’s called ‘Feelings’ because I said a lot of things about myself, like how my daily life is like being on a Bombay train. I put all of that down in the song.” “Obsessed” “I didn’t write this in a way [designed to] go viral so that people would connect with it. It was a go-with–the-flow scene. I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself or on the songs. You know what they say, right? If you focus on something too much and try to find its shortcomings… I’m not saying don’t spend time on it because you do have to spend time with your song if you want it to be good. But if you just go in and work naturally, it’ll work out. “With Abhijay, we’d made a song together already. I then went back to my hometown in Punjab and I got a message from him saying, ‘I’m not feeling this track—let’s make something else.’ I told him I’ll get back [to it] and we’ll make it. We were at Abhijay’s home studio and doing ‘time-pass’—just fun and talks—and that’s how ‘Obsessed’ was made, in two to three hours. “There’s a lot to be said about becoming a one-hit wonder and my thought process is that anyone who calls me that, I want to prove them wrong. I’ve left everything else in my life to focus on my art. Once you’ve chosen a profession, you want to keep it going until the end and work towards that. I perform this track live so much. There used to be a time when I was struggling and underrated—and I still consider myself underrated—but at that time, I used to speak to my mom about which song or bunch of songs of mine will be the ones people will sing. You have that mindset when you perform live.”