Shoegaze, Post-Punk and Central America’s Echoing Melancholy
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October 24, 2025
It’s 7:30 P.M., and the night’s first mosh pit has already broken out. The opening shoegaze band, Alturas, is playing for a packed house at Amon Solar—one of the key indie venues in San José, Costa Rica—as part of a stacked showcase put on by local alt-rock label, Furia. The room is sweltering, and the crowd grows rowdier with each act, swaying and jumping along with dreampop trio A Su Ladera, while Adiós Cometa lives up to their headlining slot with a cocktail of shoegaze and Midwest emo that reverberates through the intimate space.
In between hurried cigarette breaks and life-saving beer refills, familiar faces come into focus. Garage heartthrobs Dylan Thomas, pop-rock pixie ABBIE, and the rookie shoegaze band Roca Bruja flutter about, bantering with friends and showing off merch finds. Even the influential bloggers Carlos Soto (La Necedad) and Pablo Acuña (Dance to the Radio) turned up, and the reviews are in: The scene is reborn with the sound of melancholy tunes.
The sound of distorted rock is nothing new to Costa Rica. Throughout the ‘10s, the small Central American nation harbored a vibrant garage movement that became an epicenter of the Latin indie blogosphere. But more than just hype, the scene drew overdue attention to a region that had been historically omitted from the cultural conversation. Beyond the crossover legacy of Panamanian salsa and reggaetón icons like Ruben Blades and El General, or the saccharine cringe of Guatemalan pop crooner Ricardo Arjona, few mainstream acts have emerged from the seven-country strip that bridges North and South America—and even less so from the underground, though a scrappy new generation of shoegaze, dream pop, and post-punk bands is weaving a web of mutual aid and bummer tunes that could change that.
“Our first acoustic compilation featured all-Costa Rican bands, and for the second installment we received submissions from a lot of younger local bands, and many international ones,” says Emanuel Mora, co-founder of Furia and Adiós Cometa, linchpins of Central America’s growing indie network. “We’ve also booked shows for bands from Nicaragua (Jardin Animal), Mexico (No Somos Marineros), and Argentina (Montegrande), so now we’re actively building bridges between scenes and audiences. Split releases, for example, can put your music in the ears of different fanbases, and one that worked really well was between the post-punk bands Lentamente, from here, and Tolva from Chile.”
This past June in Costa Rica, the second edition of the Central American Music Market gathered regional talent and international bookers to create new professional avenues and foster cooperation between sibling nations. During the opening ceremony, one of the organization’s founders, the Panamanian promoter and activist Yahaira Osiris, suggested that a unified front could coalesce into a market of nearly 50 million people strong—formidable enough for the region to step out of the long shadows cast by neighbors such as Mexico and Colombia.
“It’s important not only for artists to connect, but for industry professionals to engage with peers from different latitudes,” said Osiris in September, speaking at her Panama City-based conference, MIM LatAm, which spotlights women and LGBTQ+ people in the music industry. “This year I’ve gone on over 15 trips, collecting data and meeting with colleagues I hope to bring to Central America. But my goal is for these exchanges to go both ways and to get more Panamanian artists onto the international stage.”
Similarly, El Salvador’s Fundación Sos Música is platforming original singer-songwriters such as Carol Hills and Nikki Rose in a local market that largely prioritizes cover bands. Meanwhile, NU Festival in Honduras has partnered with the French Alliance and the Museum for National Identity to put on massive block parties featuring alt-rock bands Atomic Rose, Tux Lunan, and Radiophobic, also importing tropical pop favorites like Dominican trio Mula and Costa Rica’s Cocofunka.
Visionary labels have fortified scenes too niche to otherwise find their footing in these small regional markets. Honduras’s Templo Animal stands as a bastion of Central American experimental electronic music, with sprawling compilations that pair homegrown ambient and IDM producers Bestias and Almanacs with drone masters such as Mexico’s Edgar Mondragón and Costa Rica’s Carla Alfaro. The Panamanian imprint Lógica Ciega cobbled together a dazzling archive of metal, crust punk, and hardcore stretching from the capital’s blistering metropolitan underground to scattered but devout scenes in the country’s western region. And the cassette emporium Citrus City helped rekindle dialogue between the Guatemalan indie scene and a vast, curious diaspora hungry for a musical homecoming.
“’Berlin,’ from our album Epicentro, talks about the Central American longing to emigrate and how we often think the outside world is better,” says Luis Pablo Pérez of the Guatemalan shoegaze band, Asimov. “Latin America has a complex diaspora, so we wanted to examine the idealized image we have of Europe, or what the American Dream used to mean. By naming the record Epicentro, we’ve positioned ourselves as a shoegaze band at the center of the continent, dissecting our realities, our desire to emigrate, and [disillusionment] in our own countries, which is a constant feeling in this region of the world.”
Over the past half-century, Central America has been bruised by civil wars, dictatorships, and gang violence, driving thousands to seek refuge abroad. The dust seemed to settle throughout the ‘10s, but the pandemic and political unrest of recent years sent many of these countries careening back into uncertainty, with new despots sprouting in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and multitudinous migrant caravans straining border relations.
Though melancholy and frustration are reflected in the region’s underground scenes, so are the unique cultural nuances of each country—just look to Belize’s enduring Garifuna drumming traditions and the resurgence of Mayan folk and rap in Guatemala. Pedal distortion remains one of the most reliable lingua francas in the region, intertwining scenes through the internet and gradually forging new touring routes. Keep scrolling to discover crucial players from Central America’s echoing underground, swerving through Panamanian jangle pop, Belizean dream pop, Salvadoran industrial music, and much more.
Adiós Cometa
Nuestras Manos Son Incendios
Adiós Cometa’s debut, Nuestras Manos Son Incendios, is all fun, propulsive shoegaze up until “Las Torres,” their atmospheric collaboration with Guatemalan quartet Asimov and Argentine electronic producer Lumtz, when the record suddenly plunges into frigid ambient. The tonal shift is a tremendous flex that proves the San José ensemble are as committed to sparking mosh pits as they are aural exploration, expanding on these themes alongside Mexican reverb gods No Somos Marineros and Costa Rican experimental producer Contradicta. With a sophomore release slated for early 2026, and a first teaser in the Western-y single “Candelaria,” Adiós Cometa are keeping Costa Rica’s long running tradition of pedal distortion alive and fresh.
Asimov
Epicentro I-II
Guatemalan shoegazers Asimov understand the art of pacing. The group formed over a decade ago, slowly dropping singles and EPs that, earlier this year, coalesced into their haunting debut, Epicentro I-II. Songs like “Verbena” engage with the discontent of constantly feeling screwed over by government corruption and social selfishness, while “Berlin” examines the flip side by unpacking immigrant guilt, capped with the chilling confession, “Quisiera no ser de aquí,” or “I wish I weren’t from here.” Asimov’s international ambitions have paid off; they jetted to Seattle in 2024 for performances at KEXP and Freakout Fest, as well as SXSW in Austin, Texas. The band is also an excellent barometer for Guatemala City’s post-rock and blackgaze scene, where bands like Señor del Rostro Solar and El Mundo Como Flor y Como Invento warrant even more deep diving.
María del Destierro
todo está fuera de lugar
For every band of sullen hipsters, a brighter—if not exactly “sunny”—alternative must exist. Enter Guatemala’s María del Destierro, the alias of María José Aguilar Xil, whose enveloping 2025 debut EP todo está fuera de lugar blooms from eerie electronic pessimism on “el fin” into fluttering, romantic dreampop on “ya no 3” and “playa.” María del Destierro is part of a new generation of Guatemalan bedroom artists, coupling introspective storytelling with weird, sinewy tunes, making waves alongside alt-R&B chanteuse aLex vs aLex and avant-garde saxophonist Dina Ramírez.
Solamente Muero los Domingos
qué difícil es, qué bien se siente
Originally conceived as the solo project of Andrés Jácome (formerly of Panamanian post-punk band Vida Nocturna) Solamente Muero los Domingos arrived in 2023 as a refreshing blast of jangle pop in a scene ruled by groovy, tropical rock stalwarts like Cienfue and Señor Loop. To execute his vision, he enlisted members of punk and garage favorites Hez and Sonó, stitching together the new project with guitar strings and breezier, romantic lyrics. With two EPs under their belt, the band has delivered a ‘60s-tinged ode to Hollywood cool (“Canción para Harry Dean Stanton”), summery existentialism (“Cercas, nubes y otros cosas inútiles”), and love-drunk giddiness (“Ahora doy vueltas”), with more twee earworms already on the horizon.
Sekanto
Tegucigalpenses
Eduardo Sebastián Gómez is clearly a Strokes fan. While followers of his alt-rock band Radiophobic will hardly be surprised, the Honduran singer-songwriter’s solo project Sekanto extrapolates beyond locomotive guitar riffs and despondent vocals with philosophical storytelling and impressionistic production. His debut LP, Tegucigalpenses, offers a bird’s eye view of Honduras’s bustling capital, meditating on the ravaged, colonized land beneath his feet on “5000 Años de Deuda,” while “Forex Trading” lampoons the cantankerous delusions of local crypto bros. The kraut-y bass lines of “Japón Imperial” make for one of the album’s most enjoyable head-bobbers, while patented shoegaze melancholy creeps into “Phaedrus” and “Epistemología,” grounding Sekanto in sober contemplation.
Duck
Love Letters EP: Bedroom Edition
Belize’s indie scene may be small, but it’s very much alive, with rising acts like viv and Messmer making a big push for local shoegaze and psych-pop. Perhaps the most fully realized project from this growing underground is Duck, the alias of Efrain Nephai Medina, who debuted last year with the yearning dream pop of his EP Love Letters. Though currently attending university in Taiwan, the industrious jack-of-all-musical-trades has been diligently dropping new singles, going noisy and saturated on the “Starting Over” demo and veering into buzzing surf-punk on the deliciously distorted “Ojos de Café.”
A Su Ladera
No había forma de saber
Describing their sound as melancholy pop, Costa Rica’s A Su Ladera evoke the cinematic stomach-butterflies of Alvvays while juicing their songs with enough reverb to rattle your rib cage. The band formed in 2021, jamming at home as a way to stave off pandemic boredom, then quickly realizing that their chemistry could help the project grow into more than a pastime. Their 2022 debut EP Elipsis layered spacey sequencers, krautrock basslines, and field recordings into a lovely yet experimental maiden voyage, while their follow up, 2024’s No había forma de saber embraced a more straightforward rock sound and hooky songwriting.
Diente Amargo
Legión
A land of beautiful black sand beaches and delicious, greasy pupusas, you may not expect El Salvador to house a prolific industrial and darkwave scene. But electronic acts like Safari Volvo, Amnésica, M.W.E.I.M, and Faceta Oscura howl with the creatures of the night, while the snarling, masked agitators of Diente Amargo create sprawling, politically-charged epics that take aim at North American imperialism and homegrown institutional violence. Their debut album Legión unfolds with unbridled fury, calling out corrupt politicians on the throbbing “Oligarcamatón” and surrendering to the pit of despair on “Temblores,” where singer Dino Ex Machina spews, “Es normal sentirse como un perdedor/ Es solo un día más en Salvador,” or “It’s normal to feel like a loser/ It’s just another day in Salvador.”
Jardin Animal
Girasol
A pummeling, vital blast of math rock and Midwest emo out of Managua, Nicaragua, Jardin Animal are masters of catharsis. Their 2022 EP Girasol has become a cherished favorite among indie fans in the region, floating on the nimble guitar-picking of “La Grulla” and letting the tears flow on the breakup confessional, “Melodías.” Jardin Animal join the ranks of Chile’s Estoy Bien and Brazil’s Um Quarto as part of a wave ushering a Latin American emo revival, and their recent singles “Dieciséis” and “Tren Bala” hint at a visceral new record on the horizon.
Calle Palermo
Flor de Tres
Perhaps the most joyful, earnest entry on this list, Honduras’s Calle Palermo are the perfect soundtrack to sunset slow dances, weaving beautiful pop-rock harmonies with dreamy instrumental arrangements. Composed of singer María Gabriel Dávila and multi-instrumentalist twin brothers José Daniel and José Samuel Álvarez, the band was formed in 2022, embracing a romantic yacht rock sound that eventually blossomed into their debut LP, Flor de Tres. Sweet and optimistic, tracks like the drowsy, harmonica-guided “Fantasmeo” and their country-tinged collaboration with singer-songwriter Chia Casanova on “Verte Sonreir,” make for laidback listening and a necessary ray of sunshine through all the murky distortion.