You’re about to release a new album, ‘Dolce Vita’. How would you describe it?

Eva Amaral: We wanted to imagine Dolce Vita as a kind of refuge, as a place to begin to search for happiness and as a vindication of the beauty of life. For us, it was a kind of ‘paradise bubble’, if you will. We went through different moods in that bubble and in that search we realised that you can’t be happy all the time – which we all knew – but also the importance of holding on to those moments of happiness as a kind of reserve for when things are bad.

There’s a lot of percussion, a lot of influences. It feels like a wide-ranging album. What inspired you?

EA: As a group, we’ve always been quite the travellers and very curious. On those trips, we liked to let ourselves soak up what was surrounding us. Our music has always drawn on the sounds we heard and the images we saw as we passed through different landscapes. We were on tour for this album so – although there are many songs written after that hiatus we all had – it’s a universe in motion that is nourished by all the different sounds. We’ve experimented with some sounds that we hadn’t yet included in our earlier music. For example, there’s a wind section in ‘Rompehielos’. We’ve experimented more with sounds from synthesisers, pianos and strings, without losing sight of our origin and our seed, which – as well as the voice – is in Juan’s melodies and guitars. We believe that this root of both acoustic and electric guitars, and Juan’s way of playing and his very special sound, is also very present.

In recent months, you’ve released four singles or previews of ‘Dolce Vita’. Is that aimed at finalising certain aspects?

Juan Aguirre: When we released the first preview, ‘Rompehielos’, we were still working in the studio to finish the rest of the album. However, we already had a very clear idea of what it was going to be like and of its collage of different soundscapes. Releasing previews is a label trend and it worked very well because we were finishing the festival tour and it allowed us to leave the studio and play songs that had been released the day before live. That was very nice.

When do you know a song is ready? You both write them and you work very much as a team... Does this mean you keep returning to them?

JA: It depends on the song. There are some that tell you themselves that they’re already finished, and others that we stopped working on to resume in the future and perhaps use on another album. The song decides. For us, there comes a time when it almost takes on a life of its own and sends you where it wants to go.

You’ve been making music for more than 25 years, but when you listen to songs from the first albums, they still resonate. How do you achieve such timeless successes?

JA: I think by not thinking too much about it. Eva, do you have the formula?

EA: I’m going to write a book and share it [laughing]. I’ve got no idea. We have been doing what was in our hearts, writing songs with a kind of eternal dissatisfaction, feeling that we could always do something better than what we’d done. That has always propelled us forward: not going down the same road twice has been one of our founding laws.

When you listen to those early works, how do you feel you’ve evolved musically?

JA: We have opened ourselves up to many sounds that have gradually emerged that we knew nothing of because we were very young and inexperienced. But, as well as seeing the things that have changed, we also see things that have stayed the same: music as an expression or transmission of something that beats inside of both of us; something that perhaps we do not know how to explain with words or we are embarrassed to say in real life. In the world of the creative, of fiction, it’s easier for us to strip ourselves naked. And that fiction ends up having a bit of the truth – which is sometimes shared by many people – and that’s something mysterious, something that cannot be defined.

Are those little pieces really autobiographical?

EA: There’s always something about you in what you write. Even when you write fiction, it contains a small part of what you’ve lived. And it’s often not the story you lived, but the one you would have liked to have lived. There’s always something about you in the songs and also about the people around you. A lot of times you’re telling the story that someone close to you lived through, but which is also part of our lives.

An example is ‘Salir corriendo’ – about gender violence. You were one of the first to speak up about difficult issues and you continue to do so. Do you think that success also brings responsibility?

EA: I prefer not to be responsible for it reaching a lot of people, because it would somehow block you. But, even if you don’t want to, you’re often telling stories. Ultimately, art is the reflection of a reality, based on what you say, but also on what is going on at the same time in many, many places or what many people are saying. It’s the most accurate X-ray of a historical moment. You can contribute something, maybe not even talking about reality, but something you would like it to be, as I was telling you before. That also says a lot about what reality is or is not. Right now, talking about beauty is the most subversive thing because we’re living in a tremendously violent world. It is subversion to be able to see beauty in something small in a world where we often don’t know what’s true and what’s a lie.

The album is out in 2025. Do you know when you’ll start playing it?

JA: Unlike what we have done on other tours, we’d like to take a little while to be able to work well with the media – some have seen us grow as a band – and above all to simply enjoy talking about the album. Every time you have an interview, it’s like going to psychotherapy; things come out that we hadn’t even thought about. We’ll try to enjoy the process of the releasing album, and the concerts and performances will come a few months later.

EA: We would like to prepare the show that will be Dolce Vita very meticulously and carefully. We believe that this is our best album and that it’s important to do a good show so that it lives up to those songs and this universe of protection that we’ve generated.