Long after you have finished listening to their songs, the lyrics continue to linger in your head. When you hear words like khurdure (rough) and nashedi (addict) blended with post-progressive rock music, you’re in for a lyrical treat anyway. While the music moves you, the lyrics soothe you. It’s little wonder when you get to know that Sameer Rahat, who writes the lyrics for the band Joshish, hails from a family of poets. He grew up surrounded by Urdu literature, looking up to his parents’ — Rahat Indori and Anjum Rehbar — writings, and so, all his songs are heavily Urdu-poetry driven, making each one, phonetically unique.

Songs by Joshish, especially from their debut album Ird-gird like Subah, Maujood, Nashedi and Riha, "derive inspiration from the topics in life that make us question our existence, in terms of survival, resistance and faith. We’ve always aimed at writing songs that can ignite thoughts in the listener’s head. Someone usually comes up with a melody or a basic idea of a song and then we take it to the jam room and spend time with it until it reaches its faith," says Rahat.