Niños Mutantes

In 1994 the Spanish indie rock outfit Niños Mutantes assembled in Granada at the hands of Juan Alberto Martínez, Nani Castañeda, and Miguel Haro. Several years of circulating demos, staging concerts, and entering music contests finally led the trio to issue its first album, Mano, Parque, Paseo, in 1998, the same year that saw Manolo Requena join as the fourth member. Rafael Torres came aboard in 2000, and with the arrival of their third LP, 2002's El Sol de Invierno, Niños Mutantes had solidified their place as a fixture on the Spanish indie circuit. The band pared back to a trio in 2003 yet expanded once more into a quartet when Andrés López signed on in 2008. Niños Mutantes have sustained a demanding cycle of shows and releases, playing across Spain and Latin America while putting out more than a dozen EPs and eight albums, among them two singles compilations, from 1998 to 2012, even as the raw intensity of their earliest material gradually gave way to a smoother power-pop direction.