Deriving her artist name from a Turkish term for the sun’s radiant touch on ocean waters just before sunrise, the emerging pop artist TANSU has a diverse and global cultural background with roots in Turkey and Ireland. She spent her formative years in London and Connecticut, had a stint in Boston for college, and has called NYC home for the past 13 years.

During that period, TANSU has carefully balanced her life between music and fashion, which she defines as performing arts. While working in fashion PR, she lent her vocals to numerous projects as a session and featured vocalist, most recently releasing “The Wash Up,” co-produced with Lars Viola. She also performs extensively around both lower and Manhattan, including a monthly residency at Lafolia Restaurant, every first Thursday.

Back in 2015, the emerging pop artist reconnected with American Authors‘ Dave Rublin, a college acquaintance. Since then, they’ve been writing and recording music together, including her latest single “DOWNTOWN,” which has been released through Rublin’s Little Planet Records.

Featuring skittering, trap-like beats and glistening synths serving as a silky bed for the emerging New York-based artist’s self-assured and sultry delivery. Seemingly indebted to the likes of The Weeknd, SZA, Beyoncé and others, the anthemic and hook-driven “DOWNTOWN” marks a new sonic direction for the emerging artist, while being informed by the bitter hurt of lived-in personal experience, so the song sees its narrator expressing confusion, hurt, pride and then forgiveness within a turn of a phrase.

“I wrote this song on the heels of ‘The First Big Fight’ with, who was then, my new boyfriend,” TANSU explains. ” It was weird, because I was treating the fight with one-night-nonchalance; kind of a, ‘don’t worry baby, I never liked you that much anyway’ type of feeling. Because that’s how you were SUPPOSED to feel when dating in the late 2010’s. ‘Grabbing my scars/ and then deciding just to walk out’ is a very intimate line. It questions how we can be intimate with someone, touch each others’ bodies, our scars, our souls, and then pretend that we can just move on. It’s hard to justify an intimate fling with your soul. ‘DOWNTOWN’ speaks to the juxtaposition of that mind fuck,” TANSU shares. She continues, “fresh from the fight, I needed some glorifying attention from someone else. So I went to the studio to go write something. Luckily my producer was also going through a situational something, so we came up with a sexy song while both sexually frustrated. We ended up going out to Three Diamond Door in Bushwick that night after that session.  The bridge is an interpretation of what happened after Three Diamond Door. We were buzzed, music made us dance, I got the attention I thought I wanted… but as soon as I stepped outside, I knew who I was calling.”   

The couple eventually recovered from that argument, and they got married this past weekend.