Operating far outside traditional Latin music blueprints, Puerto Rican creator Kova Parker channels his style into a volatile blend of dark electronic sounds and uninhibited pop. With the release of his debut album, “Una Cara Más,” Parker rejects fast-tracked industry trends in favor of a strict creative diet, intentionally isolating his sound to build a universe driven by heavy bass, dark electronic spaces, and raw emotional tension.
Whether constructing vocal synths with non-Spanish-speaking producers, filming in the high-altitude isolation of the Arizona desert, or turning a bizarre real-life memory into the focus track “GIOIA,” his work balances experimental discomfort with deeply resonant pop sensibilities.
For Parker, that balance comes down to trusting his own perspective, even when the result is difficult to define. On “Una Cara Más,” that instinct allows the unexpected to coexist with the familiar without either one overtaking the other. We spoke with Parker about finding that balance, following ideas wherever they lead, and building an album that feels entirely his own.
You mentioned putting yourself on a creative diet to keep your sound unpolluted by current trends. How difficult was it to isolate yourself creatively in an industry that constantly demands market awareness, and when did you know this diet was actually working?
I think it became pretty easy once I started making songs that I really enjoyed, not only making them but also actually listening to them.
I became so excited to see what I would make the next day. I was almost becoming the biggest fan of my own art, just because I genuinely wanted to know what my mind was going to come up with next.
There were days when maybe I would go listen to music with friends, and I started noticing that I was looking at music in a way that I didn’t really love. I was analyzing everything, maybe even criticizing everything, from both an artist and producer standpoint.
So I thought maybe I should just focus on what I’m doing for a while.
There are also a lot of songs that I love that make me feel a certain way, and naturally I would think, “Well, maybe if I make that type of music, I’ll feel the same thing.”
But then I started realizing that I’m not that artist. I’m myself.
I can listen to a song and absolutely love it, but that doesn’t mean I’m supposed to make something like it. I’m just not that.
So I decided to give myself some time to figure out where I fit best while still being able to feel what I wanted to feel.
That’s more or less when I realized the creative diet was working. I stopped trying to recreate what made somebody else feel something and started focusing more on my own feelings while creating art.
Working with international producers who didn’t speak Spanish forced a music-first, language-second approach. Can you walk us through a specific session in which a track shifted entirely due to a purely emotional, nonverbal miscommunication or realization?
“Un Día Normal.”
That one completely shifted.
We had no idea what to do with it. I remember talking about making it feel very nostalgic, and they asked me, “What does ‘nostalgic’ mean in music? Can you tell us exactly what chords you want?”
And I was like, “I have no idea. I just want to feel nostalgia when I listen to it.”
Then the entire song completely changed.
I created this vocal synth that I wanted them to put into the track, and then I told them to make this huge bass out of it, and we ended up creating something absolutely crazy that had almost nothing to do with what I originally thought we were going to make.
When I heard it, I remember thinking, “This is something I’ve never heard before.”
I was actually with one of my best friends when I heard that version for the first time, and I told him, “Okay, this is absolutely crazy. I have no idea why we even made this.”
And he was like, “That’s super cool, though.”
That gave me a completely different perspective.
It was almost like, why are you not just admitting that it’s super cool? Why are you trying to make it more normal?
And I basically thought, “You know what? Let’s call it ‘Un Día Normal.’ It’s very cool that it’s this weird. Let’s leave it exactly how it is. Fuck it.”
The album balances contrasting textures, heavy bass, dark electronic spaces, and pop-rock sensibilities to provoke feelings like anxiety or emptiness rather than comfort. How did you calibrate those production choices so the discomfort felt intentional rather than unlistenable?
That was actually very hard, and it’s still very hard.
Making something experimental enough while also making it good to listen to is probably one of the hardest parts for me, and it’s something I still struggle with right now.
You want to make something unpredictable, but I think the sweet spot is finding a really good balance between what’s unpredictable and what’s predictable.
For you to actually have unexpected moments, you need a lot of expected moments.
Something that helps me a lot is giving myself time when I’m making tracks.
I almost never finish a track the same day. I’ll spend months creating a lot of songs and then go back to them later with fresh ears.
Because if I create something very quickly and finish it because it feels exciting and unexpected in that exact moment, there’s a good chance that two weeks later I’m not going to like it anymore.
Maybe I created something that only needed to feel unexpected in the moment, but I never gave myself enough time to find out whether I could actually listen to it in the long term and still love it.
So time helps me understand whether something is actually good or whether I was just excited because it surprised me.
Lyrically, “Una Cara Más” centers on a character using excess, noise, and humor to mask internal brokenness. How much of this character reflects parts of yourself, and where do you draw the line between your own experiences and his more absurd or exaggerated moments?
Everything in the album comes from somewhere.
It could be something I’ve seen in myself, something I’ve seen in other people, or something I’ve felt through a movie or a book—there’s always some real emotion underneath it.
Obviously, a lot of it is exaggerated.
I almost see the character as an alter ego, or maybe an exaggerated version of things that a lot of people feel but don’t necessarily want to say out loud.
And I think music is a perfect place to talk about emotions without being judged, because at the end of the day, it’s a song.
I look at it similarly to a director making a movie.
A director could make a movie about monkeys, for example, but maybe the real purpose has nothing to do with monkeys. Maybe he wants to show you that they have feelings, that they love each other, and he wants to make you cry.
The monkeys are just the vehicle he decided would best express that emotion.
It doesn’t mean monkeys are his favorite animal or that everything in the movie literally happened to him.
I think I approach music similarly.
By using characters, fiction, or exaggerating certain moments, I’m sometimes able to express the actual emotion I’m looking for much more easily than if I tried to describe my real life literally.
You’ve constructed a universe where motifs and phrases recur across different tracks. Which specific callback or hidden connection on the record are you most excited for listeners to discover on their third or fourth listen?
Oh my God, I’ve done a lot of those.
Honestly, I’ve probably done so many that I’ve forgotten some of them. But there’s something that happens to me without even trying.
I go through phases in my life where, when I’m recording and mumbling melodies, I keep using the same words. Then eventually I realized those words ended up making their way into a bunch of different songs.
It changes maybe every six months.
Right now, for example, I’m into three or four completely different words that I keep using.
So on the next album you’re probably going to hear words and phrases repeating across songs simply because, for some reason, those are the words my brain keeps going to during this phase of my life.
I really like making everything feel like it exists inside one world.
Even if one song sounds completely far away from another, sometimes the lyrics or a repeated phrase makes you feel like, “There’s something here that connects these two.”
And sometimes I don’t even do it intentionally. It just happens. But I, as a listener, love discovering that.
“GIOIA” spins a deeply personal family memory into a story about a guy naming a caught fish after his ex. How did you land on the fish metaphor to capture that specific blend of delusion, grief, and dark humor?
It’s actually pretty simple.
I really did name a fish after an ex—a girlfriend I had for a very short time when I was pretty young.
I remember talking to a friend about it, and he had basically done the same thing with a teddy bear he had.
And we were both kind of like, “Is that crazy? Is that normal?”
The interesting thing is that I never go into the studio planning to make a certain song or with a complete idea already in my head.
I usually start listening to different sounds, and little by little I start feeling an emotion, and then I want to express that emotion through a song.
It almost feels like the world is building itself while I’m making it.
I’ve never really liked going into the studio saying, “Today I’m going to make a song about this,” because I feel like that limits me a lot.
So while I was making “GIOIA,” there was a bar about going fishing, and suddenly it reminded me of that fish I had.
And that memory basically gave me the entire concept of the song.
It was such an amazing moment because it almost felt like somebody handed me a piece of paper and said, “This is what you have to do.”
And then it just happened.
The music video places your character in the high-altitude Arizona desert alongside a loyal best-friend figure. What did that extreme landscape represent for the character’s mental state, and what role does that loyal companion play in his world?
I think there are a few feelings inside that video.
There’s definitely the feeling of happiness, but I also really like the feeling of isolation.
I don’t know if I would say the landscape had a direct meaning connected to the character’s mental state. It probably had more to do with something that I personally really love.
Whenever I go somewhere, I find myself almost taking pictures with my eyes—landscapes, mountains, different places. I love looking at environments like that.
And I wanted to give the album and the visuals a lot of contrast.
I also have this thing where I almost never want to use my first idea, because my first idea is usually probably something that somebody has already done.
So the idea of going somewhere I had never been before and basically using the landscape itself as the background felt much more interesting to me.
Then I realized it actually fit the loneliness of the character really well.
You could look at that landscape completely by itself, and it’s already beautiful. Then putting this person alone inside of it somehow made that loneliness even stronger.
So I wouldn’t say there was this very calculated symbolic connection from the beginning.
But I definitely connected this character with a lonely feeling, and being around 7,000 feet up in Arizona felt like a pretty lonely place for him to be.
But not necessarily sad.
Freedom can also feel lonely, and freedom tends to be a good feeling.
You noted that “Una Cara Más” deliberately leaves a door open to set up your next project. Visually and sonically, what does that open door lead into, and how does this album lay the groundwork for what’s coming?
It definitely leaves the door open.
But like I’ve said in another interview, I don’t really want to talk too much about my next project. I want the art to speak for itself when it comes out.
What I can say is that I’m always going to push myself to make something great.
And I’m going to be the biggest critic of myself, because honestly, if the audience were made up of a bunch of versions of me, it would be a very difficult audience to please.
So I feel like if I’m able to genuinely please myself, there’s a good chance I’ll be able to connect with a lot more people.
I really believe in creating something that you genuinely love.
And for some reason that I’m still not completely sure how to explain, I’ve noticed that when you really love something yourself, people tend to connect with it even when they don’t fully understand it.
So visually and sonically, I’m going to make sure that whatever I provide is always, always, always breaking some kind of barrier, evolving from what I did before, and most importantly, loved by me.
And hopefully loved by a lot of other people too.
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