walking upstream…
Yahritza y Su Esencia
Yahritza y Su Esencia
sourcesWikipedia · Billboard · KEXP El Sonido · Excélsior
Yahritza y Su Esencia formed in early 2022 when three siblings from the Yakima Valley in Washington state — Armando "Mando," Jairo, and Yahritza Martínez, children of parents who emigrated from Michoacán — started posting TikTok covers of the sierreño ballads then flooding out of California and Chihuahua. A viral take on Ivan Cornejo's "Está Dañada" gave way to an original, "Soy el Único," written by Yahritza at fourteen, which reached No. 20 on the Hot 100 and No. 1 on Hot Latin Songs before she'd finished middle school. The trio kept the arrangement spare — Mando's twelve-string, Jairo's acoustic bass, Yahritza's guitar and plainspoken, unadorned voice — carrying teenage heartbreak with unusual bluntness across the EPs "Obsessed," "Obsessed Pt. 2," and the 2024 album "Memorias."
the sound in question
2022
Soy El UnicoYahritza y Su Esencia
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Ivan Cornejo2020s · Sad sierreño / Sierreño / Regional Mexican
The trio's very first outing as a group was a TikTok cover of Cornejo's 2021 breakout "Está Dañada," and Jairo has recalled the clip "went pretty viral" before they'd written a single original song together; in a Billboard profile the siblings named Cornejo directly among the artists they actually listen to, not just study. What carried over from that cover wasn't repertoire but restraint — Cornejo's sad-sierreño formula of a fragile, un-oversung vocal sitting nearly alone over requintos, verses that read like diary entries rather than corrido bravado. The two acts would go on to record together directly.
listen: upstream & here
2021
Está DañadaIvan Cornejo
2022
InseparablesYahritza y Su Esencia
listen forSet "Está Dañada" beside Yahritza y Su Esencia's own "Inseparables" — the song the two acts eventually cut as a duet — and hear the same trick in both: a plainly hurt lyric delivered flat and close-mic'd, with the requinto left to carry the emotion the voice refuses to perform.
Ariel Camacho2010s · Sierreño / Corrido / Regional Mexican
Covering the group's Festival Arre set, Excélsior described the late Ariel Camacho as an "inspiración para los hermanos" (an inspiration for the siblings), noting the trio closed their performance with his "Por No Perderte, Te Perdí" as a tribute. Camacho, who died in 2015 at 22, is widely credited in Mexican music press with popularizing the modern requinto-and-bass sierreño sound that Yahritza y Su Esencia builds on — stripped down to guitar, twelfth-string, and tololoche-style bass, with nothing to hide an unpolished, conversational vocal behind.
listen: upstream & here
2014
Te MetisteAriel Camacho
2023
CambiasteYahritza y Su Esencia
listen forCompare Camacho's "Te Metiste" with Yahritza y Su Esencia's "Cambiaste" — both ride the same skeletal trio arrangement, a plucked requinto figure and walking bass under a vocal that sounds like it's speaking directly to the person who hurt it, no reverb-drenched escape hatch.
Marco Antonio Solís1980s-2000s · balada romántica / grupera / regional mexicano / latin pop
Asked by KEXP's "Cancioneros" series to build a personal songbook, Yahritza, Jairo, and Armando picked Marco Antonio Solís's "Tu Cárcel" as one of the handful of tracks that "defined them," spanning sierreño, mariachi, and corridos tumbados. Solís — as songwriter and voice of Los Bukis, then a solo star — set the template much of regional Mexican romantic songwriting still works from: a plainspoken, almost conversational lyric about devotion or betrayal, built to a chorus big enough to sing at full volume in a crowded room.
listen: upstream & here
1987
Tu CárcelMarco Antonio Solís
2023
FrágilYahritza y Su Esencia
listen forLine up "Tu Cárcel" with Yahritza y Su Esencia's "Frágil" — both spend their verses confessing something quietly damning before opening into an unguarded, arena-sized chorus about needing someone despite everything.