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Wasia Project on their latest EP, 'Isotope'

courtesy of the artist

Siblings Olivia Hardy and William Gao formed their band, Wasia Project, in their teens.

On today's show, they perform songs from their latest EP, Isotope, and they talk about the creative influence of their classical musical upbringing, how they started to develop their own tastes together, and about the impact of growing up between two cultures — they live in the U.K. and take regular trips to China to visit their mom's side of the family.

"I think it's like an openness, really, to, like, absorbing information and being open to, like, difference," Hardy says.

They also talk about how their side gigs affect how they make music together, like Gao's starring role in the Netflix show Heartstopper.

"When you are down one creative path or you are so intensely looking at one, it definitely frees a bit of space in the other side of your brain," he says.

Set List

  • "Somebody Come Through"
  • "Tell Me Lies (fin)"
  • "Is This What Love Is?"
  • "Take Me Back Home"
  • "To Get Better"

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She is also involved with Canada's highest music honors: Since 2017, she has hosted the Polaris Music Prize Gala, for which she is also a jury member, and she has also been a jury member for the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).