Dhee (singer)

Dheekshitha Venkadeshan (born 26 June 1998), known professionally as Dhee, is an Australian Srilankan singer known for her work as a playback singer in Indian cinema. Born to a Sri Lankan father and mother, she was raised in Sydney and has sung songs mostly in her stepfather Santhosh Narayanan's albums. She has once been nominated at the Filmfare Awards for Best Singer, and is known for her distinctive alto voice.

Early life and career
Dheekshitha was born on 26 June 1998 in Jaffna, Sri Lanka to a Sri Lankan Tamil father Venkadesan and mother Meenakshi Iyer who is a Carnatic musician. She was raised and did her schooling in Sydney, Australia where her parents were based. She has an elder brother Sudheekshanan. Dheekshitha is the stepdaughter of Indian music composer Santhosh Narayanan. She began her playback singing career by performing songs in two of his albums, Pizza II: Villa (2013) and Cuckoo (2014), during breaks from her education.

Since based in Chennai, Dhee made a breakthrough by singing "Naan Nee" from Pa. Ranjith's Madras (2014) alongside Shakthisree Gopalan. Her work on the song saw the pair garner nominations for Best Female Singer at the Filmfare Awards and Vijay Awards.

She received critical acclaim for her work in Sudha Kongara Prasad's sports drama film, Irudhi Suttru (2016). Being used as the lead singer for Ritika Singh's North Madras-based boxer character in the film, Dhee recorded two solo songs titled "Ey Sandakaara" and "Usuru Narumbuley". Behindwoods.com stated that the first song was "another classic Santhosh number that gets your attention in no time", while noting the "pathos song by Dhee is a revelation sorts" about the latter.

Dhee later worked with her stepfather in critically acclaimed albums including Kaala (2018) and Vada Chennai (2018), before collaborating with Yuvan Shankar Raja for the song "Rowdy Baby" in Maari 2 (2018). Singing alongside Dhanush, the film garnered popularity soon after its release. The song garnered more than 1.5 billion views on YouTube making it the highest viewed Tamil music videos and one of the most-viewed Indian videos of all time.

Dhee made her debut as a pop singer, under the A.R. Rahman-helmed label, Maajja, with "Enjoy Enjaami" featuring Arivu (from The Casteless Collective) on 7 March 2021. The song was produced by her stepfather. The lyrics were penned by Arivu. The song was immediately popular, with the music video having gained over 398 million views and more than 4.6 million likes (as of March 2022) since it premiered on YouTube. "Enjoy Enjaami" is the first song to be released under maajja. Dhee's first studio album which is also being produced by maajja. The album is expected to be released by the end of 2021 and will be largely made up of contemporary jazz songs. It will also mark her first English-language release since debuting in the (Indian) music industry. In March 2023 she debuted in Telugu cinema with the song "Chamkeela Angeelesi" from the movie Dasara. She gained popularity from that song among the Telugu audience.