Even though Usted Señalemelo have been breaking through in a big way over the past few years, the trio from Argentina started out small — with a bunch of 12-year-old kids fiddling around in a studio, to be exact.
Band members Juan Saieg, Lucca Beguerie Petrich, and Gabriel Orozco met as preteens in Mendoza, a small city near the western border of Argentina. They’d all grown up playing instruments: Saieg’s mother enrolled him in singing and guitar lessons when he was in elementary school. Orozco’s father is the musician Tilín Orozco, known as part of the Mendoza duo Orozco-Barrientos, and, as a pint-size child, Orozco started tinkering with the guitars his parents kept in the house. Petrich, meanwhile, has memories of getting his first drum kit when he was about five. His family owned a label called Fader Records, and the kids had access to a professional recording room, where they’d meet up. That space quickly became their creative playground, one that allowed their imaginations to run wild.
“It was like kids playing ball,” Orozco recalls on a recent Zoom call from Argentina. “I remember our parents would be like, ‘OK, go play.’ It was always something we did for fun.” “Everything that happened during that time felt like magic,” Saieg adds. “I remember we would grab cameras and video recorders and record our rehearsals and jump on the drums.”
Those early days of childlike wonder eventually turned into serious musical overtures. A self-titled debut album the band put out in 2015 garnered attention in Mendoza’s music scene. A follow-up record, called II, helped them build out an even bigger fan base, and this year’s Tripolar won them global recognition, with the LP securing the band’s first Latin Grammy nomination in the Best Pop/Rock Album category, alongside veteran stars like Juanes and Babasónicos. Usted Señalemelo have now graduated from small studios to tours across the U.S., a recent set at Lollapalooza, and an upcoming show at Argentina’s legendary Estadio Luna Park on Oct. 25.
Usted Señalemelo on stage at Lollapalooza
Sacha Lecca for Rolling Stone
“It’s an iconic arena in the scene, both in Argentina’s musical and sports history,” Petrich says. “It’s really important, and it’s going to be our first show there. We’ve been trying to build something incredible that’ll be an experience: It’ll be a 360 performance, where we’ll play in the middle of a rotating stage. It’s going to be the Tripolar performance we’ve been working on since the beginning.”
So much of what’s made the band compelling is a genre-agnostic sound, inspired by Argentina’s storied musical traditions (in conversation, they name-drop avant-rockers like Charly García and Luis Alberto Spinetta) and powered by the blasts of their own guitars. Tripolar was a step ahead, with colorful synth arrangements and pop-driven melodies alongside occasional strokes of New Wave and even traces of Argentine folk, which the band also references with almost encyclopedic knowledge. There’s a rich history that runs through Usted Señalemelo’s DNA, and the band has been embracing its heritage while also refusing to adhere to any one convention.
Because their output is so eclectic, they often bristle at being labeled as simply a “rock” band. Still, the group has an immense amount of respect for its country’s rock legacy, which undeniably shaped a movement of rock en español across Latin America. Bands like Soda Stereo reached worldwide acclaim; however, the genre seemed to come to a screeching halt after a tragic fire at a nightclub known as República Cromañón that killed almost 200 people. “I think that changed things a little, how people saw rock and how they saw bands at that time,” Petrich notes.
In more recent years, the Latin industry has focused less on bands in Argentina, turning its attention instead on the country’s growing rap and trap scene, which has now become a commercial force. But renewed interest in Argentine sounds has opened the door to bands like Usted Señalemelo, looking to shake things up and offer a different take on music. “I think the trap phenomenon gave visibility to music in Argentina from another perspective, from another point of view,” Saieg explains. “That’s also opened people’s eyes up to other branches of Argentinean art and expression, which has been incredible.”
Usted Señalemelo backstage at Lollapalooza
Sacha Lecca for Rolling Stone
Though the band has been busy touring over the past few months, it found time to duck into studios and start recording new music. As the group crisscrossed the U.S., it made stops in Miami and dove into sessions with Rafa Arcaute and Nico Cotton, the Latin Grammy-winning producers who worked on Tripolar. “With Nico and Rafa and us, the relationship gets stronger and we understand each other more and more every time. We’d been feeling a little unsure about releasing music after some time, but the truth is, some beautiful songs came out of this, and we’re excited for them to come to light — we’re not sure exactly how or when yet,” Orozco says with a laugh.
There’s still plenty of time for the band to figure out its next album. But first, the trio are hoping to knock people out with their Luna Park performance, and then they’re headed to Spain for the Latin Grammys. Already, that moment has a tremendous amount of weight attached to it: When they were kids dreaming up ideas in the studio, Petrich’s father, Carli Beguerie, worked on an album with Orozco’s dad that was also nominated for a Latin Grammy.
“To us, that was incredible: Our dads making this album that we’d seen them record and had watched the process around. It became a lesson in our own lives and we started imagining what a nomination would be like if it was for us one day,” Petrich says. “Now, it’s all here.”
Interview was translated from Spanish.