CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso: Papota [5020 RECORDS]

Why you'll love it

This LP pairs four new studio songs with the full NPR Tiny Desk session that made the duo famous. Papota won Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album at the 2026 Grammys.

This edition

• Single LP, 11 tracks
• Four studio tracks plus seven live Tiny Desk recordings

About the album

Not many bands owe their careers to a desk, but in October 2024 CA7RIEL and Paco Amoroso squeezed into NPR's Tiny Desk office space, played like their lives depended on it, and woke up internationally famous. The two Buenos Aires friends (they met at age six and started making music together in 2010) turned that moment into Papota, which came out on 5020 Records in March 2025: four new songs, "Impostor," "#Tetas," "Re Forro" and "El Día del Amigo," plus the live songs that started it all. Paco started violin at six, Ca7riel studied at a Buenos Aires music school, and all that training sits right underneath the clowning.

Then the trophies started piling up. At the 2025 Latin Grammys the pair took home five awards, including Best Alternative Music Album for Papota, while producers Rafa Arcaute and Federico Vindver won Producer of the Year for the new tracks. It's funk, rap, rock and pure theatre, pitched somewhere between Prince and a very rowdy wedding band, and "Dumbai" and "Baby Gansta" will have the room moving whether anybody speaks Spanish or not. Four new songs and a live set that sounds like it might tip the building over: there are worse ways to spend an afternoon with a turntable.

On 5020 Records, first out in 2025.