Let’s get this straight: Ananda Xenia Shakti didn’t just make a song—she cracked open a cosmic piñata and invited everyone from Blondie to Krishna to come dance in the glitter rain. “Hare Hare Dance,” her latest psychedelic devotional mind-melt under the banner of Love Power the Band, is a full-throttle fusion of bhakti yoga, punk roots, and cosmic street theater. It’s holy delirium set to a beat.
This is what happens when a former punk banshee trades her leather jacket for a sari, but keeps the revolution. You think it’s gonna be some hippie New Age kumbaya trip, and it kind of is—but it’s also a sonic Molotov cocktail lobbed straight into the temple of your jaded little heart.
Shakti chants the Maha Mantra like it’s the Ramones on ayahuasca. Repetition becomes revelation. Mantra becomes mantra becomes mantra until the brain gives up and the soul—yes, the SOUL, remember that old thing?—starts to boogie. The track is relentless, cycling through Hare Krishnas and Radhe Radhes like a washing machine on the spin cycle of eternity. And you know what? You come out cleaner for it.
The video is even more bonkers. Shot in 1000-degree heat on the banks of the Yamuna in India, and then spliced with ecstatic dance footage from Toronto like some astral DJ mixing East and West in a sweaty yoga rave, it’s not trying to be cohesive. It’s trying to be everything. And weirdly, it is. It’s a joyous mess—divine chaos. You can practically hear George Harrison whispering from the beyond, “Far out.”
What’s radical here isn’t the fusion. It’s the fearlessness. Shakti doesn’t apologize for her cosmic conviction, doesn’t sand down the raw edges of spirituality to make it more palatable. This isn’t wellness-core Instagram enlightenment. This is sweat, dust, drums, and devotion. This is the punk scream turned into a devotional chant because of course the scream and the chant are cousins—one says “I can’t take this anymore!” and the other says “I surrender to everything!” Flip sides of the same vinyl.
And there’s something anarchic about joy right now, isn’t there? In a world frying itself alive, collapsing under its own bullshit, here’s Shakti chanting ancient names of divine love like she’s got nothing left to lose but her ego. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe “Hare Hare Dance” isn’t a song at all, but a dare—to drop the cynicism, the irony, the numbing scroll, and just move.
It’s not slick. It’s not subtle. And thank Krishna for that. This is ecstatic music in the true sense—beyond sense. A glitch in the matrix through which the sacred leaks, barefoot and covered in glitter, shouting your name.
So what if it’s a little messy? So was Patti Smith. So was Coltrane. So is life. And Shakti’s not giving you a sermon—she’s throwing you into the fire of your own damn joy and seeing if you’ll dance instead of burn.
“Hare Hare Dance” is what happens when punk grows up, gets spiritually blasted, and decides that love—not the Valentine’s Day kind, but the universal, everything-is-divine, blow-your-third-eye-open kind—is the ultimate rebellion.
So press play. Surrender. And Radhe-freaking-Radhe, baby.
–Leslie Banks
