Angélica Garcia - “Juanita”

SXSW 2024 - OEB Score: 9; Popularity Index: 3

Pairs Well With…Tune-Yards, Lido Pimienta, Jackie Mendoza

SXSW regular Angélica Garcia returns in 2024 and she continues to push the boundaries of what folks consider Latin pop given their own preconceptions. Instead, Garcia is an artist that is willing to jump off multiple cliffs, exploring dream pop, spacious R&B, and full-on dance music across her eclectic catalog. A bilingual artist, Garcia takes advantage of conceived notions at note one to eventually present a completely different personality that fits her own invention. There’s even some punk and basement rock that influence Garcia’s sound and that makes sense as she sets her sights at burning privilege to the ground come SXSW 2024. (Kevin McStravick)

2022 Review: Angélica Garcia’s music always feels like it’s ten steps ahead and 2021 EP Echo Eléctrico is quite the example, a completely a cappella record featuring looped and layered vocals with genre wholly being a term of the past. Sometimes ethereal and others hard-hitting, Garcia takes a simple idea and blasts it with creativity, a quality she’s maintained her entire career including 2020’s excellent full-length Cha Cha Palace. There’s rarely a moment that Garcia’s music is short of fascinating, an artist that twists pop and Latin music expectations into something that is, well, just better.