Hsu received her PhD in the Critical and Comparative Studies in Music program at the University of Virginia. She has published on digital ethnography, sound-based pedagogy, public humanities, open access publishing, Asian-American indie rock, Yoko Ono, and Taqwacore. Her academic research on street sound cultures in postcolonial Taiwan currently focuses on the urban underclass experience of mobility and low-resource technology. Her civic sound project LA Listens explores the sensory, social, and ecological aspects of Los Angeles streets by providing a creative platform for community-oriented artists, planners, and organizers. Most recently, she led the maker collective Movable Parts through Movable Karaoke, a Metro-funded project that evokes and explores the collective mobility experience in LA.

Since 2007, she has taught self-designed undergraduate courses in music, gender and ethnic studies, media practice, and digital humanities at UVa and Occidental College, and led design research workshops and advised MFA students in Media Design Practices at Art Center College of Design.