GRAMMY-winning guitar duo RODRIGO Y GABRIELA have shared ‘Somos Como Tu,’ a joyous, rhythmically charged new single that marks a historic first in their two-decade-plus career: the first RODRIGO Y GABRIELA song to feature lyrics and vocals. Arriving alongside an accompanying video, the track appears on the duo’s forthcoming album, OurHome, due September 18th via ATO Records.
For a duo whose worldwide career has been built around the expressive possibilities of two guitars, ‘Somos Como Tu’ opens an entirely new dimension of their music. Rodrigo Sanchez takes the lead with soulful vocals while Gabriela Quintero answers with a rapid-fire cadence, their voices surrounded by effusive hand percussion and ecstatic gang vocals from a group of local fans. The result feels unmistakably RODRIGO Y GABRIELA even as it ventures somewhere they have never gone on record before.
Its title translates to ‘We Are Like You,’ and the song turns that simple phrase into a larger statement about migration, displacement, dignity, and shared humanity. Written from the perspective of people searching for a path and a place to belong, ‘Somos Como Tu’ considers the arbitrary circumstances that separate one life from another while returning again and again to the idea that beneath those divisions, our experiences and humanity are shared.
The track also represents an unexpected evolution for two musicians who have spent over 20 years communicating without words. Since their international breakthrough, RODRIGO Y GABRIELA have developed a musical language built around Sanchez‘s fluid lead lines and Quintero‘s fiercely rhythmic approach to acoustic guitar, turning instrumental music into a vehicle for emotion, storytelling, and connection. ‘Somos Como Tu’ brings actual language into that conversation for the first time, without abandoning the physical energy and percussive interplay at the heart of their sound.
Recorded in Japan and self-produced by Sanchez and Quintero at NK Sound Tokyo, OurHome emerged after a period of creative frustration led the duo back to the fundamentals of what they do best. Returning to the textural fluidity of acoustic instrumentation following the electric-guitar-heavy sound of 2023’s In Between Thoughts…A New World, the album reflects RODRIGO Y GABRIELA‘s decades-long relationship with Japan and the sense of artistic and personal renewal they have repeatedly found there.