As a project predicated on the unique creative chemistry between siblings, it feels apt that Will Gao and Olivia Hardy’s second EP is named Isotope. Two distinct branches of the same tree, as Wasia Project they’ve spent the last five years applying their classical training to wide-eyed jazz-pop, racking up tens of millions of streams, and securing US support dates with Laufey and a European arena tour with Tom Odell. Now they’re expanding their horizons even further, pairing their genre-bending pop with an impressive audio-visual concept.
Still just 19 and 21 respectively, Olivia and Will were born in Croydon, South London, to a British father and Beijing-born mother. They developed an appreciation for the arts from an early age, taking in poetry, theatre and the eclectic musical tastes of their parents, which ranged from Western and East Asian classical music to jazz and pop. Today, the pair fondly recall car journeys soundtracked by ELO and the Beatles, and kitchen discos to Wham, Bee Gees and ABBA, which cut a sharp contrast with their individual musical studies. Both prodigious talents, Olivia learned violin via the Suzuki method while Will practised classical piano and sang in renowned choral group, the Trinity Boys Choir.
Olivia and Will were 14 and 16 when they first started writing together. They began uploading GarageBand demos to SoundCloud soon after, picking the portmanteau Wasia Project as a playful reference to their British Asian heritage. As Olivia explains, over time the moniker has accrued a much deeper significance. “It really captures that classic mixed cultural thing: you’re not fully in one culture or the other, so there's always this yearning between the two.” Will agrees: “I’ve never been more proud of the name than I am now. I’m proud of us being open to our own ideas, and to our differences.”
The duo’s musical journey began in 2019 with ‘why don’t u love me’, a hushed laptop production balancing muted piano and a swinging beat with Olivia’s pillow-soft melisma. It
was subsequently re-recorded for their debut EP, how can i pretend, which arrived in 2022 with production from Luke Pinnell of London’s Suedejazz Collective. Other highlights from the EP included the sprightly jazz-pop of ‘impossible’ and the delicate, Yann Tiersen-esque ballad ‘ur so pretty’. It was the latter that would prove the band’s breakout moment, after appearing in series two of Heartstopper – the Netflix LGBTQI+ drama in which Will also stars as Tao Xu.
It speaks volumes of the duo’s drive that for the last few years Will has been balancing acting – and Olivia academia – with burgeoning musical stardom. Will traces that tenacity back to their mother: “She came from a very different place culturally and economically to where she is now. She worked so hard to settle here [in the UK] so she definitely taught us how to hustle.”
