Going wild: How Nathy Peluso set a new precedent for Latin pop club remixes

“I wouldn’t describe myself as a clubber at all,” says Nathy Peluso, starting off our interview with an honest — and somewhat jarring — revelation. “I really appreciate the culture and the music, but I listen to music on my own.”

Her confession as a non-clubgoer — possibly a first for a Mixmag cover star — makes more sense when you see her live. A visceral performer who absorbs every second of each song with full corporeal commitment, it’s clear that Peluso wasn’t cut out to be in a crowd. She’s made for the stage.

The 30-year-old Argentine-Spanish singer has been releasing music since 2017, first leaning into jazzy vocals over R&B and hip hop beats, before expanding into more Latin, alt-pop and electronic elements in her full-length albums, 2020’s ‘CALAMBRE’ and 2024’s ‘GRASA’.

After the success of ‘CALAMBRE’ yanked her from the shelter of the underground and exposed her to the bright lights of fame — she’s selling out stadiums, headlining festivals, and co-designing fashion accessories with buzzy brands — ‘GRASA’ is about her coming to terms with this superstardom.

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Combining seductive salsa tracks and heart-aching bolero ballads with electronic alt-pop, the album unfolds as a meditation on identity. Its ethos is brought into sharp focus with pummelling tracks like ‘Aprender A Amar’ and ‘TODO ROTO’, ferocious obliterations of self-doubt, laced with mantras like: “You have to learn to love yourself”, and blazing openers such as: “Get up bitch, there's no time / if it hurts / bandage it”.

It’s a living embodiment of the sheer effort she’s put into vanquishing imposter syndrome and claiming a sense of self-worth. Following the release, she swept the Latin GRAMMYs, winning three awards from as many nominations.

Nathy Peluso made ‘GRASA’ on her own terms, willing it to evolve into different manifestations and experiences that reverberate the album’s core ethos of self-love. So, she started an experiment. A remix album.

“Songs are stories; I wanted to see how different [artists] interpret [them] and bring the message into their world”, says Peluso. “I choose to work with producers I deeply respect. It wasn’t about just throwing a party, but reinterpreting ‘GRASA’ in another language.”

She scoured continents to enlist eight of her favourite producers and DJs to collaborate with her. The brief? Total freedom.

“I’m a curator. I’m not producing this shit. I just want to have fun,” she laughs breezily. “I already did the songs. Now people can play with them!”

Peluso’s selection is masterful. The ‘CLUB GRASA’ remix album features British electronic prodigy Mura Masa, Madrileño dancehall maestro Merca Bae, and Latin Core legend CRRDR, alongside some of the most exciting up-and-coming DJs in the Latin club sphere, like Spanish experimentalist TRISTÁN! and feral dance instigator TAYHANA.

TAYHANA was the first on Peluso’s call list. “I admire her,” says Peluso. “She’s so aggressive at times. Feminine violence. So good, so sexy.”

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The remix of ‘APRENDER A AMAR’ levels with the song’s original ferocity, by pairing the track’s ceremonial, brass-like synths with a high-tempo marching band beat. “I honestly really liked the lyrics,” TAYHANA tells Mixmag. “It seemed quite a significant message to remix and listen to in a club — simple, but beautiful.”

An opus on learning to love yourself, TAYHANA’s re-envisioning of the song makes its rallying cry impossible to shut out. “If you remix it, it almost feels even more powerful, on a loop, like a mantra,” adds Peluso.

The ‘Aprender A Amar’ remix is now a staple feature in TAYHANA’s sets — and a genuine crowd-pleaser. “I played it the other day in Prague, and despite being a Spanish-speaking artist, everyone knew it,” she says. “On the dancefloor, we’re still used to hearing voices in English. For me, it was also fun to work with another language.”

The Latin element of ‘GRASA’ was equally welcomed by Merca Bae, who challenged himself with one of the album’s least club-like songs, ‘La Presa’. A throwback track rooted in traditional Latin music, ‘La Presa’ reverts the misogynistic narration typical to 1960s tangos and salsas by swapping the roles: “Police, take me to jail / I’d rather be a criminal than an idiot / I killed a man, but for love”.

Merca’s interpretation of the track introduces a whole new genre, a breaks-fuelled salsa rave, that maintains the dramatic tension of the original. It builds with breathtaking anticipation, weaving brassy bursts over climactic breakbeats. It’s one of the most radical moments on the entire album, conjuring a whole new world of dancefloor possibility.

“The basslines are new, but I used a lot of the salsa percussions and I just layered them with jungle drum patterns,” Merca says. A salsa aficionado, he is deeply knowledgeable about the genre’s distinctive intricacies. “It has many different percussions — bongos, congas, claves, everything. It’s made as a jam normally with musicians playing together,” he recounts. “You have to forget being on a grid. The only [dance] genre that takes me to that is jungle. The percussions are free, and there’s more groove.”

Peluso’s vocal is characteristically marked with singular modulation, leading to a distinctive percussive effect she achieves with her voice, adding shouts and screams in between. Merca takes these elements—“coo coos” in the example of La Presa—and uses them to build drum fills and anticipate key change. “You can use that as effects, and it works so well.”

Another track in the traditional Latin vein is ‘GRASA’ opener ‘CORLEONE’. A high-drama bolero ballad defined almost entirely by vocal performance and an absence of beats, it appears entirely reimagined on the remix album under the wizardry of 20-year-old avant-garde electro newcomer TRISTÁN!

While most artists on the remix album didn’t touch Nathy’s vocals, TRISTAN! flipped the song entirely. He speeds up the vocals before culling the pace with a heavily distorted guitar riff. The track then rebuilds as a synthy space-rave ride. It’s a gloriously odd approach—and Peluso doesn’t care if her song is hardly recognisable as a result.

“He went crazy on that one! Crazy experimental shit. I love that,” she beams. “People aren’t ready for that! It’s so deep, you got to be into it, it feels like you’re high.”

Demonstrating the range of her curation, Peluso didn’t shy away from asking big-name producers to flex their creativity, either. Mura Masa delivers the album’s standout earworm with a glitch-filled rendition of ‘MENINA’.

“I love doing reworks where I have total freedom to mess with the form and function of a song,” says Mura Masa, real name Alex Crossan. He was drawn to the thumping aggression of ‘MENINA’, which is characterised by punchy favela funk beats, featuring Brazilian artist Lua de Santana.

“I wanted to isolate the vocals and work up from there. It's got such an identity and energy to it already, I wanted to use that as my foundation.”

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With lyrics like, “I don’t regret or question my desires” and “I put gold on my fangs, so every time I smile, my shine is reflected”, the song is a takedown on critics and a reclamation of self-worth.

Crossan was struck by its power. “I was drawn to the aggression and totality that Nathy and Lua are projecting. It stuck out as being immediately fun to take into a club space,” he says. “I could hear the kind of rhythm and sparseness that I wanted.”

Like a proud parent, Peluso is reluctant to pick a favourite remix. She hails Crossan’s genius spin on ‘MENINA’, and admires Merca’s ambitious take on ‘La Presa’ (“it feels like you're in a movie”). nusar3000’s reimagining of ‘REAL’ also holds a special place in her heart (“like the old school reggaeton I listened to when I was young”).

‘CLUB GRASA’’s exploratory spirit is refreshing, especially at a time when a remix album for vocalists has come to imply nothing more than the addition of a high-profile guest verse. “I didn’t imagine putting another artist in the songs, they’re already made,” says Peluso. “It’s a choice, but this is [done] in a different way.”

The album’s unpredictability and creative freedom has set a new precedent — no other major Latin pop star has curated such a selection of boundary-pushing DJs and producers and given them free rein over an entire album. “That’s the beautiful thing about this project. You can see the mind of the producers going wild,” Peluso says.

The ‘Club GRASA’ process is a drastic departure from the remixes of the Latin pop heavyweights she grew up with in the early 2000s: “It was trendy for singers like Luis Miguel, Thalia, Gloria Estefán to add remixes of their singles at the end of the album, but really random! A whole different vibe,” she laughs. She can’t pick one of her all-time favourite remixes (“there are too many good ones”), but offers a wild-card — a house remix of Gloria Estefan’s 2000 salsa song ‘No Me Dejas De Querer’, complete with sped-up vocals and a rap verse. “It’s so funny.”

Peluso may not be a clubber, but she does understand club music, and the message of ‘GRASA’ is one that fully resonates with dancefloor culture. “The club is the place where people get to be who they are. And we need to protect that, especially now when everything feels so hostile.” As to how, that’s a trickier proposition. “I don’t know how to save the world,” she admits. “The way I can protect nightlife is by making music so people can feel themselves. I guess this is my way.

Despite her modesty, it’s worth highlighting that throughout GRASA’s world tour, Peluso has enlisted local club nights and DJs to throw official after parties, ensuring each stop has a grassroots connection. “For me, the underground is the most important thing. The roots are what move you, it’s where there is no fear, no industry expectations,” she says. “I come from playing in tiny places, creating without asking for permission, so I will always stay connected to that energy. It’s where the most honest, bravest stuff gets cooked.”

Lately, she’s taken a shine to amapiano and Afro house producers Chris Collins and Afri K, residents at the Zsongo Club party that exploded out of Madrid’s multicultural Malasaña neighbourhood a few years ago. “I saw videos of them on Instagram, really crushing the dancefloor,” she says, in awe of their energy “It’s pure inspiration.”

Peluso pauses here. While she’s admired their sets online, she’s not experienced their club nights on the dancefloor: her level of fame prevents her from accessing these spaces. She acknowledges superstardom brings certain barriers to an authentic relationship with underground club scenes — “the way people treat you, see you, the money, all that shit” — but she maintains focus on the music, through the remix albums, collaborations, afterpartys, in any way she is able. “Even if I’m going wild in the whole world, I will stay by the underground. It’s about the way you keep learning, it's about the feeling, the way you stay involved with and learn from the new generation,” she declares.

Teasing new evolutions of the ‘CLUB GRASA’ project, perhaps more remixes exploring different sounds to drop in future, Nathy Peluso’s excitement is palpable. “I want it to grow and grow,” she gushes. “I’m just starting.”

'CLUB GRASA' is out now, check it here

Charis McGowan is a freelance writer, follow her on Bluesky