María Zardoya Is Bridging Worlds Through Music

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María Zardoya, the front woman of the Latin indie pop band the Marías, feels like she’s existed between two worlds almost all her life. She was born in Puerto Rico but grew up in the Atlanta suburb of Snellville, Ga., where she felt too Latin to fit in. But when she visited Puerto Rico, she didn’t feel Latin enough. It’s a familiar feeling among a large swath of young Latinos in the U.S. And in a sense, Zardoya says, she and the band also exist in this liminal space. “I feel like that sort of identity thing that I grew up with kind of shows itself in the music industry as well, and I’m still figuring it out,” she says.

After releasing their debut album in 2021, the Marías were asked to be a featured artist on Bad Bunny’s 2022 juggernaut of an album, Un Verano Sin Ti, where they appeared on the song “Otro Atardecer,” and quickly went from making a name for themselves in the indie world to being pulled directly into the mainstream. The song has accumulated over 450 million streams on Spotify. The band was then invited to be a part of Tainy’s 2023 album, DATA, on a song featuring fellow Puerto Rican and up-and-coming rapper Young Miko. Zardoya says she feels a sense of community among Latinos in the music industry. “Anytime you can bring visibility to your homeland, you feel proud to do that,” she says. “When Bad Bunny, Tainy, and Miko reached out, I felt even more proud to come from this little island and showcase our culture.”

In May, the Marías put out their sophomore album, Submarine, on which some of the songs detail the end of Zardoya’s relationship with her bandmate and now ex-boyfriend, Josh Conway. She says, from the beginning of their time as a band, she struggled to balance being open about their relationship and wanting to be private. “There’s this saying in Spanish, ‘La ropa sucia se lava en casa,’ which translates to ‘the dirty clothes, you wash them at home.’”

It’s not a breakup album, she maintains, because not all of the songs are about their split. She prefers to call it a “heartbreak album,” sharing that she pulled from other experiences of loss. “It was messy at first,” Zardoya admits. “It almost feels like a funnel, where all of these experiences, thoughts, uncomfortable and difficult moments funnel into the music. We’re at the end of that funnel; we’ve found our way, and now our relationship is better than ever.”

Zardoya got into Buddhism and lived a Zen lifestyle while writing the album, and one of the main lessons she learned is to be mindful of the present moment. As the band reaches new heights, she reminds herself: Nothing else exists, not the future or the past, only right now.