Photo: Rolling Stone India
For most of his career, Hashbass's job was to be invisible. As a session bassist, he played on records for Sid Sriram, Prateek Kuhad, Divine, and Karsh Kale, among others — the kind of work where, if you're doing it right, nobody outside the credits notices you're there. "A session player is just a guy who'll show up, play and leave," he told Rolling Stone India back in 2016. "I think it's a lot of discipline and work."
Nine years later, Hashbass closed the debut edition of Lollapalooza India with a live set built entirely around his own name — "House of Hashbass," a rotating-cast concept featuring Hanumankind, Shubha Mudgal, Benny Dayal, and half a dozen others, performed in January 2023. The session player had built a stage of his own, and he'd filled it with the same range of artists he used to quietly support from the back of the room.
This is how a bassist who spent over a decade making other people's records sound better ended up with a mixtape, a Rolling Stone India Future 25 placement, and a festival-closing slot under his own name.
Key takeaways
- Hashbass (Harshit Misra) dropped out of mechanical engineering, studied at SAE Institute Chennai, then earned a scholarship to Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, where he later became a faculty member (Rolling Stone India, 2016 & 2025)
- He spent years as a session bassist for artists including Sid Sriram, Prateek Kuhad, Divine, and Karsh Kale before building any solo profile of his own
- In January 2023, he closed Lollapalooza India's inaugural edition with "House of Hashbass," a live concept set featuring Hanumankind, Shubha Mudgal, Benny Dayal, Ankur Tewari, and others
- In February 2024, he produced all six tracks on "Baccha Kisko Bol Raha Hai," an EP for Dharavi Dream Project rappers Saniya MQ and Kavikaar, released via Tiger Baby Records
- His debut mixtape, "House of Hashbass, Vol. 1" (11 tracks), released April 3, 2025 via Misfits Inc., and later that year he was named to Rolling Stone India's Future 25 list
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The Starting Point: From Engineering Dropout to Musicians Institute
Hashbass didn't start out chasing a music career in the conventional sense. He dropped out of mechanical engineering and enrolled at SAE Institute in Chennai before earning a scholarship to Musicians Institute in Los Angeles — a genuinely difficult path into the instrument, not a hobbyist's route. According to his own artist profile, he won the Outstanding Bass Student Award along with additional scholarships there in 2014, and later returned to the school as a faculty member, eventually leading a masterclass titled "Groove and Grind: Music Business with Hashbass" there in 2025.
His influences reflect that same range: Yellowjackets and J Dilla alongside Gospel and Indian Carnatic music — a combination that shows up directly in a playing style built on odd-feeling but catchy grooves rather than straightforward genre imitation.
Years as the Invisible Session Player
While still building his name, Hashbass logged studio and touring time in Los Angeles working with American Idol winner Candice Glover and Grammy-nominated performer Wayne Brady, according to his professional profile. Back in India, his session and production credits accumulated across a genuinely wide range of artists — Sid Sriram, Prateek Kuhad, Divine, Karsh Kale, Prabh Deep, Shilpa Rao, Suman Sridhar, and Benny Dayal among them, per Rolling Stone India's coverage and his own listed credits.
Hashbass, on what session work actually requires: "A session player is just a guy who'll show up, play and leave. I think it's a lot of discipline and work." (Rolling Stone India, 2016)
That discipline is a big part of why, when he eventually built a solo platform, it didn't read as a vanity project — he'd already spent a decade proving he could serve dozens of other artists' visions before asking anyone to pay attention to his own.
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Returning to Delhi, Rebuilding From the Ground Up
In 2015, Hashbass returned to Delhi to care for his ailing mother — a personal detour that put his Los Angeles momentum on pause. He rebuilt from there, and by December 2016 he was performing at both Bacardi NH7 Weekender in Pune and Goa International Jazz Live in the same weekend, evidence that the rebuild had worked. "Bass is my voice in general, so I don't need to advertise it anymore," he later said of the instrument that had, by then, carried him across two continents and back.
Photo: Wild City
Building "House of Hashbass" as a Platform
The clearest turning point in his career came in January 2023, when Hashbass closed Lollapalooza India's debut edition on the Nexa Stage with a live concept he called "House of Hashbass" — not a solo set, but a rotating showcase built around his own bass playing as the connective thread. The guest list included Hanumankind, Kayan, Rashmeet Kaur, Burrah, Benny Dayal, Ankur Tewari, and Shubha Mudgal — a genuinely unusual spread of genres and generations to put on one stage, and a direct extension of the range he'd already built as a session player.
"I don't want to be the jack of all trades, master of none," he's said of his approach to the range in his work. "I need to focus. I've been doing this for a very long time and need to know where to navigate."
Producing for the Next Generation
In February 2024, Hashbass produced all six tracks on "Baccha Kisko Bol Raha Hai," an EP for teenage rappers Saniya MQ and Kavikaar from the Dharavi Dream Project, released via Tiger Baby Records (Zoya Akhtar's label) with Ankur Tewari as creative producer. He's described the speed of that process directly: "I only had a brief that they were young and hungry. I felt like I really zoned in when I created the sounds of this EP. In two days, I had made six ideas based on just their scratch vocals."
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House of Hashbass, Vol. 1: The Mixtape
Hashbass turned the Lollapalooza concept into a recorded project with "House of Hashbass, Vol. 1," an 11-track mixtape released April 3, 2025 via Misfits Inc. Confirmed tracks include "6" (featuring Raaginder), "Majra" (featuring Saniya MQ), "Pain & Pride" (featuring The Siege), "Pata Nahi" (featuring Pahaad), "Sullan" (featuring RAK), "Run2U" (featuring pho), and "Don't Hit My Line" (featuring PYRX) — a tracklist that spans rap, Punjabi pop, and singer-songwriter features, consistent with the same genre-blending instinct that shaped his session career.
The Indian Music Diaries praised the project for its "seamless arrangement" and cohesive curation across a genuinely wide roster of collaborators — a direct payoff of years spent working across genres as a session player rather than staying in one lane.
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2025 and Beyond: Coke Studio Bharat, Touring, and Future 25
Hashbass has also been credited on production and arrangement work for Coke Studio Bharat, including "Holi Re Rasiya" with Seedhe Maut, Maithili, Ravi Kishan, and Mahan. He toured the United States with singer-songwriter and music supervisor Ankur Tewari, and in 2025 was named to Rolling Stone India's Future 25 list — a recognition that arrived roughly a decade after his first Rolling Stone India profile in 2016.
Asked about AI's growing role in music production, his answer avoided both dismissal and blind enthusiasm: "It's scary. It's also limitless, and the more quickly we adapt to something, the more we'll be able to sail through."
What Other Independent Artists Can Take From Hashbass's Approach
Anonymous work can be a genuine career foundation, not just a stopgap. Years of session bass work for artists across wildly different genres gave Hashbass both technical range and a real professional network — the guest list at his Lollapalooza set didn't come from nowhere.
A solo platform doesn't have to mean a solo sound. "House of Hashbass" succeeded specifically because it kept the collaborative, multi-genre instinct from his session years — his own name became the frame, not a replacement for the range.
Formal training and real-world reps compound over time. A Musicians Institute scholarship and award mattered, but so did over a decade of studio and stage work afterward — the credential opened doors the work then had to justify.
Producing for other artists can be as career-defining as performing. His production work on the Dharavi Dream Project EP shows that a session musician's value doesn't stop at playing — the same ear that serves other artists' records can shape entire projects.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Hashbass?
Hashbass (real name Harshit Misra) is an Indian bassist, composer, and producer based across Mumbai, Bengaluru, and New Delhi. He spent years as a session bassist for artists including Sid Sriram, Prateek Kuhad, Divine, and Karsh Kale before building his own platform, "House of Hashbass," and was named to Rolling Stone India's Future 25 list in 2025.
What is "House of Hashbass"?
"House of Hashbass" began as a live concept set that Hashbass used to close the debut edition of Lollapalooza India in January 2023, featuring a rotating cast of guest artists including Hanumankind, Shubha Mudgal, and Benny Dayal. It later became a recorded project, "House of Hashbass, Vol. 1," an 11-track mixtape released in April 2025.
Where did Hashbass train as a musician?
He studied at SAE Institute in Chennai before earning a scholarship to Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, where he later became a faculty member and, in 2025, led a masterclass on the business side of music.
What has Hashbass produced for other artists?
In February 2024, he produced all six tracks on "Baccha Kisko Bol Raha Hai," an EP for Dharavi Dream Project rappers Saniya MQ and Kavikaar, released via Tiger Baby Records. He has also been credited on production and arrangement work for Coke Studio Bharat.
Is Hashbass signed to a label?
His recorded work, including "House of Hashbass, Vol. 1," is released through Misfits Inc. His career has been built substantially on independent session work, production credits, and live performance rather than a single label development deal.
Hashbass's career doesn't follow the usual arc of an artist chasing a breakout single. It's built the other way around — years spent making other people's music better, formal training taken seriously enough to eventually teach it, and a solo platform that only arrived once there was a decade of real, varied work behind it. The bass, as he put it, was always his voice. It just took a while before it was pointed at his own stage.
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