By Carla Andersen for Peaches n’ Pop

Madame Gandhi turned a Brooklyn stage into a love letter, and every instrument in the room helped write it.

Madame Gandhi didn’t just release an album on March 20 — she built a room around it. At National Sawdust in Brooklyn, the award-winning electronic artist and activist celebrated Love Letters From Brooklyn with an event designed to feel as intimate as the music itself. Before the live set began, the audience moved through a grounding meditation honoring the spring equinox — an unconventional opener for an album launch, but one that made everything after it land differently.

The performance leaned on live instrumentation in ways that gave the album’s studio textures a second life. Saxophone, bass guitar, hand drums, and a full drum kit filled the room while Gandhi shifted between playing instruments and delivering vocals that were smooth, and soft. Nothing competed. Everything served the same atmosphere. For an artist who first broke through as the drummer for Grammy-nominated M.I.A., the instinct to let rhythm lead — even when she’s the one singing — was unmistakable.

Love Letters From Brooklyn itself runs five tracks, each developed through an all-women songwriting camp with equitable splits in partnership with Gender Amplified, the music organization dedicated to empowering women and gender-expansive producers. The album blends R&B and organic pop with electronic production, and the result is a project that feels warm without being overproduced. It’s dedicated to Gandhi’s partner, gold-medalist boxer Lesley Sackey, and that dedication isn’t decorative — it’s structural. The songs are written toward someone specific, and that specificity gives them a weight that more generalized love songs rarely carry.

Following the performance, guests lined up for a vinyl signing and meet and greet. Gandhi’s mother, New York humanitarian Meera Gandhi, and Sackey were both in attendance.

“And that’s an album!!!” Gandhi wrote on Instagram afterward. “Thank you to everyone who came out to Brooklyn on Friday night to celebrate big with us!! New heights.”

Madame Gandhi’s catalog has always moved between activism, percussion, and electronic experimentation. Love Letters From Brooklyn strips that formula back to something more personal — and in doing so, adds a new dimension to an already layered discography.