Cuco - Ridin' (Deluxe) (2025) [Hi-Res]

The musician born Omar Banos emerged in the mid-2010s as a teenage old soul: His first brush with virality was for his slide-guitar cover of Santo & Johnny’s dreamy 1959 hit “Sleepwalk”, recorded in his high-school bedroom. A decade later, the 26-year-old singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist has amassed a die-hard fanbase for his vibey, lo-fi pop in which he draws from doo-wop, psych rock and norteño and often lapses into Spanglish (as on his breakout single, 2017’s “Lo Que Siento”). “When I was first putting out music, I was always just trying to release—I didn’t necessarily have a timeline or an idea of what I wanted to do,” Cuco tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “But as everything became a little more established, I feel like taking the time to put together projects that felt cohesive would be worth taking the time.”

His third album, "Ridin’" is a love letter to his hometown of Los Angeles—specifically, its Mexican American car culture. It’s also a callback to the old Chicano soul music he’s loved since he was little. “ICNBYH” feels beamed in from an AM radio broadcast circa the early ’70s, with its easy-going swirl of brass and woodwinds. Far from the Ableton experiments of his teenage bedroom, here he’s joined by a team of first-rate instrumentalists, from The Roots’ trumpeter Dave Guy (who appears on “My Old Friend”) to producer Thomas Brenneck, who’s worked with everyone from Amy Winehouse to Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. “It could be riding with the whips, riding for your people, riding through the motions of life,” Cuco says of the album’s title. Still, it’s built to be played in the car with the windows down.