Merging Western pop with music from the Indian subcontinent isn’t a new idea, as the partnership of Canadian guitarist Michael Brooks and the late qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has proven. But Toronto-based Punjabi singer Kiran Ahluwalia isn’t simply layering the usual modal melodies and hip-hop beats on top of each other—she has her eyes set on a hybrid music that mingles everything from Irish folk to bhangra. With a feminine, almost heliumlike voice that’s reminiscent of the best Bollywood singers, paired with her uncanny precision, Ahluwalia gracefully wrests her way around notes like a cobra wrapping itself around an unsuspecting neck.

Ahluwalia’s life story doesn’t follow the typical prodigy-groomed-from-birth arc. A student of classical Indian music since the age of seven, she and her parents emigrated from India to Toronto, where Ahluwalia now lives. Growing up in one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world meant being exposed not only to music beyond the Bollywood of her childhood, but also to the aspirations of bi-city living: She got an M.B.A., and until recently, was a practicing bond trader. But in a flash of inspiration, she quit her job, claimed music as her career and moved to India to study ghazals, an ancient Persian form of music that uses erotic poetry. Upon returning to Toroto, she discovered local poets composing their own contemporary ghazals. It is these, set to her own music, that she’ll perform at HotHouse. If the serene weave of acoustic guitars and tables on her self-titled CD is any indication, Ahluwalia might stand as the subcontinent’s next great crossover hope.

-Matthew Lurie