Alt.Latino

As we poured ourselves into the El Tiny takeover of the Tiny Desk, a month's worth of new music piled up in our inboxes. So, this week, we dig in and bring the long-awaited debut album from Puerto Rico's Benito-approved ensemble Chuwi, the rap-electronica of Monterrey's alternative experimentalist Nsqk, and a track of resilience in the face of an earthquake's destruction. Plus, Sofía Campos, The M...

Last week we published a Tiny Desk Concert that ended up being unusual for a few reasons. First of all, it was the final production of our sixth annual El Tiny series. This was a very emotional moment for a lot of reasons. People really love Los Tigres del Norte, to the point that playing their albums feels like sitting with family. And if you’ve seen the introduction I gave the band just before t...

The Tiny Desk’s magnetism is its intimacy. We strip back lights and a big stage and get to see artists speak honestly about who they are directly to an audience around the world. This becomes all the more profound during our El Tiny takeover of Latin Music Month, where artists whisper truths and share secrets about community, country, pain and family. Often on production days, artists share with u...

The music of Tim Bernardes fits as easily in the poetry of the cosmos as it does in the songwriting canon of his country. Brazil has a legacy of some of the greatest most intricate, emotional songwriting there is, and if you ask me, I’d argue Tim fits right into it. So, I invited him in to play a Tiny Desk for our annual El Tiny takeover. And, of course, I took the opportunity to pull him into the...

Jazz has often been called America's musical gift to the world. This week's guests remind us not only of the well-documented ways that Cuba revolutionized that gift, but also how it blossomed in South America. Chilean tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana and Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba stopped by after their recent Tiny Desk performance to chat about their own personal histories with jazz and its...

YEИDRY's music is almost as diverse she is. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Italy, the singer’s repertoire of genre and sound pulls from multiple continents, and even more unique cultural roots. It’s complicated to explain so many mixed identities, but, as we know quite well at Alt. Latino, music is an easy way to tell a complex story. From the first song she ever heard to a track tha...

Shortly after Los Texmaniacs did what they do best at the Tiny Desk, I pulled them into a studio to chat with them about the traditions they represent with their music. It turned into a master class on the accordion-fueled style known as conjunto, a mix of European folk music and Spanish-language storytelling. Plus, the group shared some love for one of the iconic artists who taught the world how...

This week Ana features two very different Brazilian artists that both draw heavily on the '60s and '70s Tropicália genre. Felix presents two very different approaches to Colombian folkloric music and a new Spanish-language singer-songwriter who turns sadness into light. Artists and albums featured in this episode: (01:52) Maglore, 'Fluxo Natural' (07:13) Indus, 'El Mangle' (12:42) Candelabro, 'Des...

I like to think I’m the one who keeps things fresh on the show — or at least that’s what I tell everyone. But this week Felix once again proved that false, bringing in a fresh corridos tumbados duo from Guadalajara who takes a something-old-turned-new genre and smashes it together with metal. It's something I’ve never heard before. What can I say, Felix keeps us all young. I went back to Brazil wi...

Latin identity has been at the core of Cypress Hill's music from the very beginning -- their 1991 track "Latin Lingo" gave voice to the Latin roots of hip hop with its funky Spanglish callouts. But it took the band thirty-five more years to make an album of original songs written in Spanish: 'Dios Bendiga,' which was just released. In this episode, Felix chats with the band -- B-Real, Sen Dog and...

Mexico isn't the first place you think of as the cutting edge of experimental electronic music. But two new projects show that might be changing. LATIN MAFIA recently teamed up with British producer Fred again.. to make a bold new album featuring collaborators like Mabe Fratti and Lil Yachty. And the up-and-coming duo RØZ -- comprised of producers Manolo Cabrera and Hugo Lara -- just released thei...

Harry Styles just finished a 5-night run in Mexico City. You know who else had a 5-night run in Mexico City? Michael Jackson in 1993. Mainstream artists have a long history of being enticed by the energy of performing for a Latin American crowd … which means there’s also a long and less-known history of big pop stars making music for that audience. Did you know Michael Jackson has a Latin track? S...

To celebrate Ana's world premiere as a DJ -- a gig playing for 5,000 people in Central Park, which she definitely, absolutely prepared for -- this week we present her summer playlist. We've got song of the summer contenders (Aitana's "SUPERESTRELLA"), sleeper hits we missed when they dropped (Quevedo's "EL BAIFO"), and bubbly classics-in-the-making we keep coming back to (Rawayana's "Se Vienen Cos...

Bill Evans might not be techno. But in this week's episode, the slow-building angst and tension of electronic producer Debit's new music reminded Ana of the beloved jazz piano master. And that kind of genre cross-pollination is everywhere in this week's showcase of new music: Brazilian field recordings remixed for the club, multiple reinterpretations of the Cuban guaguancó, and Spanish producers c...

We'll take any excuse to talk about the insane quality of music coming out of Spain these days. This week, we got one: Spain defeated Argentina on Sunday to win the 2026 World Cup Final. So, this episode is a celebration of the multitude of music scenes across Spain that we can't get enough of. Catch boundary-pushing electronic and hip hop producers in Madrid, indie rockers and songwriters in Barc...

With last week's best-of show behind us, we've got a clean slate to dive into our favorite new music kicking off the second half of the year. Felix brings a batch of country tracks, while Ana -- to absolutely no one's surprise -- continues her exploration of Brazil's endless supply of captivating music. Catch a mesmerizing indie-ambient album from João Carvalho, some posthumous crooning from Raul...

It’s that time of the year again: a mix between Christmas and Halloween for me and Felix. We gift you our best album picks of the year so far — and there’s nothing spookier for us than having to choose. So here it is, the music we’ve loved and listened to the most in the first half of 2026, some of the best (in our opinion) from all of Latin America and its diaspora. — Anamaria Sayre Artist and al...

On this week’s Alt. Latino, Anamaria and I both gush about 'Femme Fatale Vol. 2,' the new album from Chilean-Mexican singer Mon Laferte, who is on one of the more amazing creative streaks I've witnessed in a while. Also, Ana and I sometimes unintentionally align when picking new music for the show, and that took place this week with a couple of Brazilian highlights: I chose an artist who records a...

This week's episode is a musical time machine. In the late 1960s, the band Zapata sprang out of a street gang in northwest Washington, D.C., with a sound that combined a variety of contemporary styles: Afro-Caribbean rhythms, soul jazz and the golden era of American R&B. The mixture worked. For a few years, Zapata opened for an astonishing number of A-list acts passing through the city, like Miles...

We're living in a moment when the geopolitical intersects with the personal in a profound way. The relationship between the United States and Cuba is once again in the news, and it happens at a time when there are a handful of new releases from Cuban artists on the island and around the world. The sounds of the albums are vastly different, but they all draw from the same deep well of inspiration t...

Ruben Ramos' life story mirrors the history of what we now know as Tejano music. His family's musical roots in Texas go back to 1918, and as a boy he was brought into the family bands, first as a drummer and then as a vocalist. He's been playing big band-inflected Tejano music now for more than six decades, and just released a tribute album tracing that musical lineage, called 'Los Días de Calor.'...

We don’t often get to discuss the ways that Latin American music made its way west across the Pacific Ocean. But this week we have two incredible projects that celebrate that journey. First, a Japanese band that fuses traditional minyo folk sounds with cumbia and other Latin rhythms. Then, a project that unearths a forgotten history of the 19th century Mexican cowboys who went to Hawaii to help ma...

Two different pioneers - from two different continents - are at the heart of this episode of new music. Since the late 1980s, Gipsy Kings have been infusing Catalan rumba flamenca with a pop sensibility that defies the purists. Their new single "Historia," from an upcoming album of the same name, shows they've still got that punchy danceability forty years on. And across the pond, Mexican rocker a...

Since 2014, we've been hitting bands up to send in their videos for the opportunity to win the Tiny Desk Contest. And almost from the beginning, Alt. Latino has been pulling aside the bands and artists that play Latin music. It’s always been a highlight to see the incredible talent that's out there night after night in bars, clubs, community centers, street parties and backyards, finding new ways...

I've been dying to interview Argentine artist Milo J ever since he came to NPR earlier this year to perform at the Tiny Desk. The 19-year-old started his career as a trap artist, but his latest album, 'La Vida Era Más Corta,' mines Argentine folklore to present a bold vision of his country that resonates deeply with younger generations. That Tiny Desk was just released -- and became one of our fas...