Los Retros

Los Retros originated as a bedroom pop outfit created by Mauri Tapia, a first-generation Mexican-American raised in Oxnard, California. Drawing from Latin American pop, soft rock, and funk, Tapia crafts tracks that feel relaxed and warmly nostalgic while carrying enough off-kilter charm to suit the left-field pop roster of Los Angeles-based Stones Throw Records, the label that signed the project in 2019 and released the EPs Retrospect and Everlasting.

Tapia began playing music in childhood, starting with guitar lessons at age eight before exploring additional instruments through an after-school program. His earliest efforts centered on hip-hop demos and video game-inspired pieces, yet he later shifted toward songwriting shaped by the Latin American rock and pop acts his parents favored alongside vintage funk and jazz artists. Although he initially assembled a group named Retrospect, the endeavor soon turned into a solo venture because Tapia handled nearly all recording himself on a second-hand mixer inside his bedroom, which doubled as the family living room. He started posting material online in 2017, put together a live band, and performed across Southern California. The growing regional audience eventually caught the ear of Peanut Butter Wolf, leading to a Stones Throw deal when Tapia was 19. Operating under the name Los Retros in tribute to the Chilean band Los Ángeles Negros, Tapia issued the single “Someone to Spend Time With” in February 2019 and supported Cuco on his West Coast tour the same year. He married his friend Lupe, the band’s keyboardist, and several tracks on the 2019 EP Retrospect drew inspiration from her. Stones Throw followed with Everlasting, Los Retros’ second EP, in 2020.