Valley native Kataria finished singing at the Arizona State Fair when her father insisted she perform her way to their car. Then, a man approached her late in the evening.
“We were walking back to our family car at like 10 o’clock at night,” she said.
“I kept telling him, ‘Dad, you just heard me sing. Like I don’t need to sing again.’ And he just kept insisting and insisting.”
So she sang a few lines and a stranger run toward them in the dark.
“Hey, who was singing?” he asked. Slightly embarrassed, Kataria watched her father hand over a recording of her singing Whitney Houston “I Will Always Love You” that he had in the trunk.
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The rest of her story is straight out of a movie. Michael Jackson’s manager got hold of the recording. They were impressed and invited her to Beverly Hills to sing live to prove she was the real deal.
“He was very happy, very impressed with my live performance,” she said of Jackson’s manager. He told her to go home, perfect the demo, and he’d try to get it to Jackson.
It did.
Jackson heard the demo and requested an immediate meeting with him. Her family packed up the car and returned to California. Upon arriving, she had to battle nerves as she waited for the pop legend to appear in his library.
“He was the nicest,” she said. “He was so warm, had this big smile on his face.”
She, once again, sang Houston’s song. Impressed, Jackson took Kataria under his wing. She became his protégé, living and recording at Neverland, touring Europe, learning not just the mechanics of performance but the discipline of artistry.
“More than just the artistry, he was just such a nice person, such a good human,” she said. “So thoughtful and attentive, and like you wouldn’t believe.” Losing him was devastating. “Seeing him kind of, you know, leave this earth… for such a good person, it’s especially difficult.”
After his death, she stepped away from music.
But she has returned, releasing singles in a steady stream. Her new singles — “I Earned It,” “Trophia” and now “Born Again” — form a narrative arc: survival, confrontation and purpose.
She has an avant‑garde, theatrical, regal surreal vibe, calling herself “The Sorceress of Pop.” The moniker is rooted in her South Asian heritage.
“Trophia,” she said, transformed some of her most painful experiences into power.
“Every time I hear it, I think of the friends who weren’t really friends at all, the ones who smiled to my face and had very different conversations when I left the room,” she said.
The music video, directed by Sam Fox, sends her on a hero’s journey into the underworld of her subconscious, where she discovers the strength that had always been waiting.
“Born Again,” her newest release, is the emotional core of the EP — a ballad about vulnerability and self‑discovery.
“It is rooted in my own personal struggles and just how impactful being surrounded by true love and support can be,” she said. “It changed the trajectory of my whole life.”
The video, directed by Nik Dodani, opens with flashbacks of Kataria as a young girl before shifting to her present self. The choreography supports the raw lyrics, revealing the protagonist’s armor and the softness beneath it.
Her songwriting is intimate, penning lyrics with producer Abdullah Siddiqui. Their sessions are long conversations about her life, her past and what led her to return to music.
“With the songwriting, you’re going to feel the authenticity. It’s very, very real,” she said.
Growing up in Phoenix shaped her too. “There was really no lane for an Indian artist for the longest time,” she said. She vowed to create that lane.
Her dream is simple: to be in the household of everyone — mothers, daughters, sons — the way Michael Jackson was. “I just want everybody to be jamming to my music.” And the message she hopes people take from her work? “Authentic, live your joy. Don’t let anybody intimidate you.”
