Swami 3: San Francisco brother band turns childhood jams into citywide anthems

Swami 3: from local stages to viral success

Swami 3 is carving out a space with music rooted in purpose. Their songs tap into universal themes, growing up, overcoming challenges, and holding onto hope, all wrapped in anthemic melodies that stick with you long after the music stops. Meet Rohan, Shaan, and Noah Swaminathan.

SAN FRANCISCO - Swami 3 is a San Francisco-based brother trio who have been building their act for more than a decade.

The Swaminathan siblings  – pianist Rohan, and twins, drummer Shaan, and guitarist Noah,  – began playing music together as kids and started performing publicly in 2017. Their first show took place at St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church in Diamond Heights.

"So we all found our love for music when we were very young, when we were five," Rohan explains. "I started playing piano, Noah started playing guitar, and Shaan started playing drums. And we realized by 2017 that we all had what we needed to form a band. And then during the pandemic, with all the time on our hands, we started learning lots of new covers and sharing it with the world and we started to get ready to perform."

Photo by: Anand Swaminathan

Since then, Swami 3 has grown from small local shows to larger stages across San Francisco, including the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair, Golden Gate Bandshell, Music City SF, and Chase Center. Their performances focus on crowd interaction and a strong live presence.

Musically, the band blends pop hooks with classic rock influences, drawing comparisons to AJR and the Jonas Brothers, with inspiration from Queen and The Beatles.

Photo by: Roy Scopazzi

At the center of it all are themes that resonate well beyond their age: growing up, resilience, and hope. Their 2025 singles "Rise Up" and "Hero" have helped define that identity, with "Rise Up" surpassing 1.5 million YouTube views and "Hero" climbing past 2.1 million shortly after release. The latter even earned them recognition at ConnectedSF’s annual event in November 2025, where Swami 3 received a Hero Award for their uplifting message and community impact.

But even as their audience grows, the band’s focus remains grounded in connection. "We’re just trying to use the music to bring our friends and our family and just the community together," Shaan says. "And we’ve been really excited that we’ve been able to do that through our music online and at our shows."

That sense of place matters. In San Francisco, a city with no shortage of stages and stories, Swami 3 has found a scene that feels both expansive and personal. "There are obviously a lot of opportunities in San Francisco for music," Noah notes. "There are a lot of cool venues, like the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair, Chase Center, there’s Golden Gate Bandshell, and we’ve been really lucky to be able to play at those venues and share our music with the world, and San Francisco really loves music like this."

Now, the band is leaning into reflection as much as momentum. Just this Friday, Swami 3 released an acoustic adaptation of Alphaville’s "Forever Young," paired with a new music video on YouTube. The timing feels intentional—less about nostalgia, more about capturing a moment in motion.

Rohan puts it simply: "We’re kind of all growing up. I’m going off to college next year, and we will also be leaving high school in a couple of years. And so we just wanted to remember all of the fun that we’ve had in our youth. And so we decided to do an acoustic adaptation of ‘Forever Young.’"