Nithyasree Mahadevan, also referred to as S. Nithyasree, is a Carnatic musician and playback singer for film songs in many Indian languages. Nithyashree has performed in all major sabhas in India. She has released more than 500 albums. She is best known for her rendition of the A. R. Rahman composition, "Kannodu Kaanbadhellam" - her playback debut song in the Tamil movie Jeans.

Jeans is a 1998 Indian Tamil-language romantic comedy film co-written and directed by S. Shankar, and produced by Ashok Amritraj and Murali Manohar. The film stars Prashanth and Aishwarya Rai, while Lakshmi, Radhika Sarathkumar, Nassar, Senthil and Raju Sundaram play supporting roles. The background score and soundtrack were composed by A. R. Rahman, while Ashok Kumar and the duo B. Lenin and V. T. Vijayan handled the cinematography and editing, respectively.