Buscabulla - EP II

Pitchfork 75

In many ways, the Buscabulla story is indicative of the new paradigm in independent music: an indie spirit buttressed by corporate sponsorship. The Puerto Rican-born, Brooklyn-based couple of Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo Del Valle won a Guitar Center contest for the privilege of having Dev Hynes produce their first EP, which was recorded with help from Converse, and released by the hybrid clothing/record label Kitsuné. Berrios still holds down a day job as a designer, while raising her two-year-old with Del Valle.

Their breaks are representative of the kind of opportunity that millions of American citizens in Puerto Rico have sought out as they’ve left their homes on the island to pursue new lives in the states. But the exchange runs both ways. Just as NYC’s global market and culture has shaped their lives, they help ingrain Boricua culture into America’s, bringing the sounds and stories of the islands to mainland and, often, to English-speaking audiences.

You can count the recorded Buscabulla songs on two hands, and they all sound like love songs to their homeland; Berrios’ lyrics convey a longing, distant gaze that buffers out the island’s rough edges, a magical oasis that exists only in dreams. These themes permeate Buscabulla’s self-released second EP, a continuation of the first, both in concept and aesthetic. “Frío” is a duet with Helado Negro’s Roberto Carlos Lange, in which the “Young, Latin, and Proud” singer tries to comfort Berrios as they weather the winter’s biting cold, yearning for the warm embrace of their hometowns. “El frío éste duele/(Duele en tu mente),” they sing, or “This cold hurts/(The pain is in your mind.)” “Perdón” considers the closure of leaving things, and people, behind. And “Tártaro,” the ode to “salsa erotica” legend Frankie Ruiz, romanticizes the island’s seedier corners with a nostalgic fondness for sleaze that can quickly be punctured by the grimness of reality (like when the band found used towels and condom wrappers in the room they booked at an infamous Puerto Rican love hotel to shoot the video).

But Ruiz is an excellent analogue to the vibe that Buscabulla seeks to create. He sings about adultery and promiscuity, but with a croon that sounds too pretty to be wrong. While Buscabulla’s live shows are considerably more high-energy than the lounge vibes on the records, they still draw from the same the sonic palette. Their aesthetic is post-chillwave but decidedly Caribbean, with percussion that skews towards salsa, and there are discernible nods to reggaeton, bachata, and even hints of Sade’s new age soul (if she was an alto). Del Valle has admitted to being drawn to the “peculiar type of charm” of Ruiz’s music, a kitschiness wrapped in a beautiful voice, reminding us it’s still fun to be naughty.