Three women pose confidently in stylish, bold outfits featuring metallics, animal prints, and dramatic silhouettes against a plain background. One woman kneels in front, while the other two stand behind her.

Say She She’s Piya Malik: ‘We never want to be typecast’

The disco funk group member on the trio's serendipitous origins, feeling instant chemistry with each other, and their latest album

From left, Piya Malik, Nya Brown and Sabrina Cunningham of Say She She.

Alyssa Boni

Words by Anjana Pawa

It’s a perfectly serendipitous New York City story. For Piya Malik, it’s a tale of chance that sparked the formation of her band, disco-funk trio Say She She. In an old tenement building in Brooklyn, Malik’s singing collided with the sounds of one of her future bandmates singing.

“Sabrina (Cunningham) was living in the apartment below me, and she could hear me,” Malik reminisces with JoySauce. “She used to hear me singing late at night and stomping around in my big old clumpy heels. And I would hear her singing early in the morning, waking up, doing her warm-ups.” They didn’t meet in person for a while though, only through the vibrations of sound in the floors and ceilings, until one day Cunningham left cookies at Malik’s door for Christmas and Malik left a bottle of bubbly for New Year’s in return. From then, a real life connection formed.

Three women in bold, fashionable outfits and sunglasses pose confidently against a plain background. They wear black heels and patterned tights, with dramatic jackets and accessories, including a hat, black headpiece, and red phone prop.

The members of Say She She all met in New York.

Alyssa Boni

Somewhere around the same time in the mid 2010s, Malik met Nya Brown in an equally serendipitous way—they were both dating guys who were making music together. Malik and Brown met at a house party one evening. “We were both dating these guys,” Malik shares. “We always laugh now. We ditched the boys, but we kept each other.” And with musical chemistry and what feels like magic from the universe, the trio came together to form Say She She.

From the beginning, friendship was the band’s creative engine. “We were friends first, like family really,” Malik says. “That kind of trust makes collaboration possible: we can be brutally honest and still love each other after.” The group’s name itself carries that spirit of playfulness. A nod to the French phrase c’est chi-chi (meaning “it’s chic,”) “Say She She” is a statement, a declaration of glamorous energy and an unapologetic nature.

Before Say She She, Malik’s musical life was already a collage of worlds, like many who grew up in immigrant households. She grew up in London to immigrant parents. Her mother was from India and her father was from East Africa, originally from South Asia. Her parents filled their home with the sounds of Bollywood and soul. She also grew up with an uncle who composed for Hindi cinema’s golden era, working with the likes of Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosale. From a young age, she was enmeshed in a home full of melody and rhythm. As a teenager, she trained classically in Western opera. An Indian girl singing a libretto in Italian often came as a surprise to audiences who didn’t expect that voice to come from that face. “It was funny to them,” she recalls, “but I’d win all the competitions.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by ⚡️SAY.SHE.SHE⚡️ (@saysheshe)

She also trained in Indian classical for some time. “I would study with one of my uncles,” she shares. “For many years it was more devotional music and learning breathing techniques for that.” Her classically trained voice brought her to perform in venues in London, Venice, and beyond, but a long-term music career didn’t seem like it could be in the cards for her. “I desperately wanted to be a singer, but I never thought I’d make it in the music business because I’m not blonde, not pretty enough, and won’t wear skimpy clothes—mostly because my dad wouldn’t let me,” Malik laughs.

By the time she moved to New York, she was ready to break boundaries entirely and when she met the other two women, they knew it felt right. And Malik, as someone who runs on instinctive energy when it comes to relationships, felt an instant chemistry with her bandmates. One of the foundations the band was built on was a refusal to be constrained by genre, even though a lot of their inspiration is drawn from the early days of disco. “When we started Say She She, one of the things we said was that we never want to be typecast,” shares Malik. “We’re not one genre, one type of person, or one type of voice. We’re multifaceted, like all humans are.” This idea that they are a multitude of things at once extends to what they make music about as well. “We should also have the freedom to express ourselves and our ideas,” Malik says.

The band draws inspiration from the shimmery sounds of the 1970s, but their songs also carry the grit and tension of today's era. The trio have a knack for blending their voices together to create a buttery harmony together. This is where all three of their classical training really shines. “We love that era’s sound,” Malik explains, “but we throw in these dramatic moments inspired by our loves, like a Maria Callas aria set to a groove. It’s about emotion, not imitation.”

Malik’s (and her bandmates’) personal experiences shape the songs, many times giving them a sense of depth and urgency. “This album, especially, is more autobiographical than our other ones,” she says about the band's latest release Cut and Rewind, which dropped Oct. 3. “The title track also titled ‘Cut and Rewind’ is all about being on the road relentlessly. Coming back, getting into the studio, cutting the tracks, rewinding, and doing it all over again. You can almost hear that rush in the music itself.” Other tracks on the album explore other facets of being a part of an industry that asks a lot of you. “She Who Dares” turns dystopian unease amidst the current political climate into a dance floor anthem, and “Bandit” was born out of experiences facing misogyny in the music industry. “We never want to ram politics down people’s throats,” Malik says, “but it’s all there, woven in. The lyrics are layered, full of double meanings. You can listen six times and still find something new each time.”

In the upcoming year, the girl group is getting ready to hit the road and play their songs for a live audience. “Honestly, our dream is to play stadiums,” says Malik. “Not every musician wants that, but for a band like ours that lives on the road—it’s what we aspire to.”

At the heart of Say She She is a belief that music should be as multidimensional as the people who make it, and Malik, Cunningham, and Brown all equally bring forward their diverse, deeply rooted layers to the music. With their latest album release, Cut and Rewind, what shines through is a movement of sound, sisterhood, and a celebration of self-worth. The trio shimmers, but the real sparkle comes from something deeper: a shared belief in creating authentically without permission and still making time to dance.