NPR Music - Alt.Latino: Spain wins (at music, too)

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

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 Barcelona, and some old favorites whose voices never stop (looking at you, Buika!). Artists featured in this episode:(01:22) C. Tangana(04:19) Ralphie Choo(06:28) Mora(10:10) Bikôkô(13:52) Buika(16:04) Repion(20:42) Lucia Fumero(23:12) Maestro EspadaThis podcast episode was produced by Noah Caldwell. Suraya Mohamed is the executive producer of NPR Music.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

From MPR music, this is Alt Latino. I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Anna Maria Sayer. Let the Chisemay begin. The Chisemay this week is that... Br... Duh. Spain won the Mundial!

Quite a celebration. I just read that there were millions celebrating in Madrid. Of course. I will not lie. I saw the images of people celebrating in Madrid, and I was like, Mexico City looked like that after we won't. every single game.

So it made us think back to just so much of the music from Spain that we had been featuring over the years. And we have had a nice representation of music from Spain, various genres, cultural, styles, attitudes, everything over the years, many, many years. Felix, I have talked so much about how exciting I find the Spanish scene to be. I mean, it really is this level of innovative. and exciting and new and fresh all the time that I find myself bringing Spanish artists on all the time

just because they do something interesting. And so I was really excited to have an opportunity to be able to talk more about what they're doing, why they're doing it, and revisit. A lot of artists I've already brought on the show and maybe a few that we haven't heard before. And I think that we have to start with the Setangana Tiny Desks that he produced in April of 2021.

It was just astounding. It was really, I remember seeing it for the first time and just completely blown away with the presentation of what he had done on his album, but then what he was doing in real life and how it just completely really captured to me my understanding of the essence of this Spanish scene. Amazing.

Felix, it is absolutely one of my favorite tiny dust, honestly in general, especially of the home one. So let's hear a little bit of it. The things that my gente are the things that always have given. cupita to brind and others for the two for the two that are with you.

Those who no me sub-subbed to internet vacilland of my go. Now that we put in the alfumrita roja, they're coming

me matts if they can't enter, me mura, no I can't faila. I, without these

people, for what in gojones I want to pass That was Settingana playing his home Tiny Desk Concert. Now, Felix, for those who don't know, Settengana is probably one of the most interesting, innovative producers to come out of Spain in recent years.

I mean, he notoriously worked on Rosalia's earlier projects. He's constantly collaborating in a way that I find not only fascinating, but really refreshing. He's also super friends with Carine Leon. He's responsible for that incredible flamenco regional album that I brought on a couple months back. And he really just has, I don't know, he has vision. He has a really interesting vision. He came out with an album a couple years ago

that a lot of these songs are from that was really focused, El Madreleineo, that was really focused on, you know, paying homage to a lot of sounds from a lot of places. And that's something that I see again and again with Spanish artists, with especially these producers from this Madrid scene,

which is what I want to talk about first, Felix. If we're going to go point by point on the most exciting parts of Spanish music right now, we have to talk about all my favorite producers in Madrid. The floor is yours. Okay. So I've talked to you about this before, but great opportunity to talk about it again. There's this amazing collective of producers called Russia IDK in Madrid. And the first person that I want to play you a song from is an artist named Ralphie.

And this is his latest single, Baby Baby. Sometimes it's hard to flee Sometimes it's art Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby I'm in the eyes and the spada You're just a idiot Being like, I remember when you're you

And not we're the ultimat I'm cruised Tell me you, How can't sachear Tanta melancholia And by-dalen, I'm let go I'm just going to I'm just about

Now, Felix, I have talked a lot about these producers. There's Ralphie Chu, who I see as one of the originators, one of the big names in there. There's Rousalski, who I brought in for a tiny desk. There's also a bunch of smaller artists in there, and they really do work as this kind of beautiful collective. Referring back to the Seteenana Tiny Desk that we played earlier, that energy, that culture of Sober Mesa, of everyone sitting around jamming together, they do that but electronically, which is really unique in how they do it, and they're always bringing in interesting new sounds that I haven't heard before. Another artist from this collective who's a lot smaller, his name is Mora,

and I want to play you one of actually my favorite songs that I heard like in the last, I don't know, year. And this is his collaboration with Setengana. It's called Droga. Oh my Never No, my No, I'm gonna

No, I'm gonna To get to I'm a note For much that Dismude To be a Manny

M'emete's M'am you made gruegeria See me and you're turrista and Goet

to be a love And my Cora That's a Rowe And if you Oh my God. The creativity, man, that whole Bacchata intro, just the flow over the bongo with the little guitar pluck in and then the drop.

Just carry on, gentlemen. Carry on. You guys are killing it. And that's what I mean for, where there's kind of no rules for them. You know what I mean? And I think part of that is because they are picking and pulling and plucking from a lot of the Spanish language world. And so they don't feel the need to be like, well, a bachata sounds like this, which, okay. So let's revisit the conversation because we've talked about it a lot, right? Like Spanish artists, just like Settengana did, really doing these kind of albums that survey a lot of traditional Latin American sounds, which are obviously rooted in Africa, all these rhythms. But chat, marina, lo que sea.

We've talked about it a lot. We both kind of feel it's fair game. Listen, I don't care what everybody thinks. That's, I completely agree. Fight me. We're going to fight me. He says Felix on his Facebook. It is, man.

It is. It's music. I just had this conversation in an email with someone with a friend of mine, just today, talking about Brazilian music and Latin music and all these titles. You know, the titles, I explained to him, and the term Latin music, it's useless at this point. When you have a creativity that we just heard, Spanish language music, that was Bacchata to a dance thing to, like, there are no terms. And it's completely open. I don't think that it's appropriation or anything like that at all.

but, you know, fight me. And always with respect, right? Like, that's the thing. Exactly. With respect, with pop or attribution. One of the things that impresses me every time you bring something in on it is just the amount of, I don't know, what you would consider indie artists,

people who are not affiliated with either a label, a sound, or just a particular tradition. But their music all comes together in a way that just, we find a place for it. You know, Felix, and that's one of the things, too, about Spain right now, is I'm talking about, you know, I started by talking about these Madrieno artists who are very electronic, really interesting producers. A lot of people in Latin America want to go work with them,

collaborate with them to have that producer experience. But there's also these absolutely incredible alternative artists who are doing their own project, doing their own thing. And it just doesn't sound like anything, you know, I've ever heard. There's this artist, Bikoko. I think I've showed you her before, but I'm just going to play you her again. She's absolutely amazing. I'm going to play you a bit of. this track called Forchha. Okay, before I get into it, I want to play you one more from her called La Mano. I wish I could come back as a 20-something-year-old producer who knows how to work.

All this technology that just creates this amazing rhythm stuff. I'm just so blown away by the nuance of the rhythm of all this stuff. It's just crazy. Crazy good. It's so expressive in this very specific way that, especially when we're talking about Spain, right? Like, there is this kind of insulation, I guess you could say, of the country because it is language distinct from its bordering countries. Like, you don't get that in Latin America, right? There's a lot of cross-border exchange in this very natural, but also maybe sometimes limiting in a way, way, maybe limiting for innovation.

But in Spain, they're really isolated. And so they pull from Europe. And there's clearly a lot of European influence in what she's doing, what a lot of artists are doing, you know, from the dance scene in Europe and things like that. But then you do get, there's almost like, to me, Felix, like a flamenco tone to her rhythm. Do you get what I'm saying? Like the way that she moves, it's really fascinating to me. And we were talking earlier, Felix, on one side, it like, it doesn't have anything to do with it.

But on the other side, there's something about her. energetically that reminds me of Buicka. I don't know why, but it's the energy. It's something about the power that she brings to what she does. Okay, for those that don't know, Buicka, who is a lot of people's favorite, especially here at NPR, she is a vocalist from Palma de Mallorca who, man, she's got this deep flamenco voice. We had her on a tiny desk a number of years ago.

She did this amazing record with Cuban pianist Chucho Valdez. It was a tribute to Chamella Vargas, so her range, her musical landscape is wide. That's by way of saying who Buicka was. So let's hear a little bit of her tiny desk from 2013. This is Concha Buica on the Tiny Desk. An amazing

My brother Toys Toys, Myrius A lot and a little more

To get my Felicity That's a more and more And an amazing performance

performance. There is just something about that vocal quality. I don't know. It's really reminiscent to me of a lot of, there is like a power and a confidence to some of these young Spanish artists. And it makes me think of this other band. I saw them Felix at Monkey Week, this kind of conference festival in the south of Spain last November. And I just, like, they stayed with me. They have such this really interesting energy. They're called Repion. and I want to play you a little bit of this song, Barrio Somavia. You know, Anna, you're touching on something that was always a highlight of my visit to the South by Southwest Festival in Austin because the Sounds of Spain presentation, there was always a lot of really great rock bands.

Absolutely. And the thing about Spain, Felix, specifically, and I think it's important to know, you know, where this sits in the context. because Spain, you know, under their dictatorship, they were not able to create certain types of art. They weren't able to sing publicly. I mean, that's still, you can see, like, culturally in Spain, people don't dance that much when they're out in certain ways and bars. And that has to do with this history.

And so what happened is once that ended, what you saw was this really incredible, you know, surge of punk and rock and all of these different things. And it still carries today, especially in the north. Do you remember, Felix, when we were up there in Bilbao and in all these places where we felt a lot of that, like even in stores and cafes, we heard a lot of that music? Yeah, I do. And it reminded me of, again, how we've been doing this in Alt Latina for a while.

There was that record label in Spain that started reissuing a lot of the punk that came out right after the fall of the Franco dictatorship in 1975. There was a lot of reissues of stuff that's no longer available, but they had found it. and they put it out. And man, the energy, the rawness of that is just, it was overwhelming. And it could hear a lot of that and the rock that came after that. There's still so many other exciting artists like these girls, but they had a special energy to me, Felix, for sure. I think it's time for a break, Anna.

Let's take a real quick break. We'll be right back. More music from Spain to celebrate their triumph in the Mundial. Okay, we're back. We're listening to music from Spain. Anna, you brought the whole playlist this week. This was such an exciting opportunity for me, Felix. Really, I just, I listen to so much Spanish music.

And I get to just sit back and listen. So carry on. Okay. So now we're entering my most exciting, I think the most exciting thing for me. I am huge fan of the Spanish producers. But nothing gets me like some of these artists in this Barcelona indie kind of jazz scene. So we have to remember, first of all, we don't forget Barcelona. A lot of people talk about Madrid.

It's kind of like the bigger space for music. But oh my God, the artists that come from Barcelona talking Rita Pais, Silvia Perez-Cruz, even Rosalia. Now, the interesting thing to me, Felix, about Barcelona and the whole region of Catalonia is that it's not like Madrid where everyone arrives from different parts of the country or in other places in the world and they make music. I mean, there are those artists. But a lot of these artists are very local. Like they're actually local Catalunians. They're from generations and generations of the place. They make music and live where they grew up with their families, with their grandparents.

And so you hear a lot more of that local exchange there, I would say. It's something that, you know, some of these people have known each other for a lot of years. So the first song I wanted to play is off of the 2024 Luchia Fumero album. I specifically want to play her collaboration, yes, with Rita Palles. This song is called La Bamba. Anna, I was so no can't go for comemis,

but they never me get to where I never for compromise if a day to be me to where you

have been if a day dechre Anna, I was so knocked out when you brought in Lucia Fumero that I built a whole playlist around. That is the ultimate sign when Felix builds a whole playlist.

Remember, she did the two albums, Folklore Uno and Folklore Dos in 2024, because there was so much creativity to be contained on one record, man, and they flow flawlessly. And there is a difference, I think my point, you know, when I talk about this Barcelona seed, when you take a little bit of the business element of the music industry out of it, because that's really what we're actually talking about here when you talk about people who have, real relationships. The way that making music functions now with a lot of these young artists is you go for a session, maybe a label pairs you up and you make something. That's a completely different and honestly, less organic experience than, hey, we're all friends, we have a relationship. Let's

create something together. Not necessarily as a band or a single project, but as people who just probably sat down, I bet, I mean, Lucien and Rita are super friends. They play together all the time. They sat down and that probably came out of so many moments of just creating and making music for the sake of making music together. Which brings me to one of my most favorite duos in Barcelona ever, I don't know. These two brothers, Maestro Spada, they make up this duo and they actually work a lot with guitarica de la Fuente, who you know I also love who's also from this area. but oh my god Felix the way they make music together there's something about being brothers

like we've talked about with Hermanos Gutierrez that just does something special I'm going to play you one of my favorite songs La Desperia I'm pretty sure I hear an Indian tabla in those percussion breaks that's what I've always wondered what's in there

but it adds this quality that it's like in my skin. It's so beautiful this song. And I think that that's something right about the brother dynamic, about creating something with people who mean something to you. There's just this certain type of soul that is really present, I think, in everything that they make. And that's my point with this scene is that it's really organic, it's really authentic.

It's pooling, yes, from Spanish sounds. You know, technically flamenco is not from this region. there's some artists that play with it, but really more just from a really sweet, acoustic, kind of beholden to no one type of creation, which I find really exciting. I think that, Anna, once you dig in and start looking and discovering and doing all that stuff,

once you dig in, same with Brazil, what you're going through right now in Brazil. It's like there's so many, you have a knack of finding so many artists that completely blow me away. And you can follow this thread of these artists who just don't want to follow tradition, but use it, respect it, but then expand upon it. And that's what all of this music is this week.

And the other thing I think maybe we have to talk about is you mentioned Rosalia in passing. Just this past weekend, I was having a conversation with this bass player in San Francisco who listens to all kinds of stuff. And she's still blown away about Rosalia's album. And she had a chance to see her in California. and we talked about how unpredictable it was and how, in a way, even despite all the massive sales, she's still part of this tradition, I think, and she thinks,

of defined category, especially with Lux, and just creating something that's completely new, and that record just happened to get a lot of attention. But it's just the tip of the iceberg of all this and other amazing music that you seem to find under every little corner everywhere you go. So carry on, young lady. Well, congratulations to Spain for winning the Mundial. Viva Mexico. But congratulations to Spain. And thank you for giving me excuse to talk about a lot of really exciting music.

You have been listening to All Latino, our audio editors, Noah Caldwell. The executive producer of NPR Music is Soraya Mohamed. And Sinhali Menta is executive director of NPR Music. Drop us in line. Who have you been listening to from Spain? We'd love to know what you're listening to. Write to us at alt-latino at npr.org. I'm Felix Contreras. And I'm Anna Maria Sayer. Thank you for listening.