Latin-influenced art-pop group ChuCha Santamaria were featured on the cover of the East Bay Express for the February 29th issue. If you missed picking up a physical copy, you can still read the overwhelmingly positive article online.

Here’s a snippet from the piece by Ellen Cushing describing how the band came into existence:

Kirkland happened to have an old synthesizer lying around, so

[lead singer Sofia] Córdova fed him some abstract ideas as to what she’d like the song to sound like — “palm trees, darkness, with clacking sounds in the background” — and wrote a set of lyrics about Columbus’ “discovery” of North America to go along with it. That song became “Fiebre Tropical,” the lead single from the album, and both the mood and production process stuck: Before they knew it, Kirkland and Córdova had written and recorded an eight-song LP, released last summer by the Austin label Young Cubs.