Pop and Indie: The Screen and Heart Generation (2001–2020)

What emerged from that crisis was not just a new policy or a new economy: it was also a new music. The years following 2001 produced in Argentina an explosion of popular creativity: the indie from La Plata, the electropop from Buenos Aires, the new singer-songwriter music, the glamorous and melodramatic pop of Miranda!

It was the generation that had grown up with national rock as a legacy and that now sought its own language — more electronic, more fragmented, more connected with the global, but equally Argentine in its sensitivity.

Miranda!: Pop as a Soap Opera of the Soul

Alejandro Sergi and Juliana Gattas formed Miranda! in Buenos Aires in 2001 and built in two decades of career the most consistent and original Argentine pop project of the 21st century.

Miranda! is an Argentine duo that self-defines as "the Argentine electro-pop-melodramatic group." Since its beginnings in 2001, it has built its own universe: glam pop, overflowing theatricality, and lyrics that make you enjoy, dream, love, and even dance while you cry.

What Miranda! did was something that Argentine pop had rarely allowed itself: to be absolutely aware of its own codes, to celebrate melodrama instead of being ashamed of it, to make the kitsch of Argentine soap operas a valid artistic material without ever losing the intelligence behind the shiny surface.

"Perfecta" — — was their most universal song: the anthem of the woman who demands to be loved as she is, with the synth-pop production of the eighties reinvented for the 21st century.

"Don" — — is the song with the most memorable reference of Argentine pop of the 2000s: "Lolo's guitar" — a phrase that became a shared code of an entire generation.

Their performances were described as "glamorous and melodramatic" and they were classified as "the most outstanding group of the indie-electronic scene of Buenos Aires," receiving the nickname "the monster of the underground." In 2024, Miranda! won the Gardel de Oro — the highest award in Argentine music — confirming that the melodramatic pop from La Plata had reached the center of national culture.

Él Mató a un Policía Motorizado: The Indie from La Plata

Santiago Motorizado and his bandmates founded Él Mató a un Policía Motorizado in La Plata in 2003, with a name taken from a subtitle of a B-class American movie they had seen at a party. The name was a joke. The music was not.

Él Mató a un Policía Motorizado combines punk rock with noise rock and noise pop, achieving a sound of heavily distorted and foregrounded guitars. Their influences include Pixies, Ramones, Weezer, Sonic Youth, and The Velvet Underground.

What Él Mató built in twenty years of career is the most important and beloved indie rock catalog in Argentina in the 21st century. Discos Laptra — the label from La Plata founded to distribute their music — became the home of the most relevant Argentine indie: Bestia Bebé, Las Ligas Menores, Peces Raros — a whole generation of artists who built a scene outside the mainstream of Buenos Aires.

Juana Molina: The Explorer

Juana Molina — born in Buenos Aires in 1962 — began her career as an actress and comedian in the nineties, left it to settle in California, and started making music that was unlike any other Argentine music.

Her albums Son (2004), Un Día (2008), Wed 21 (2013) — are sound objects of radical singularity: overlapping acoustic guitar loops, processed voices, rhythms that emerge from textures. International critics compared her to Bjork and Brian Eno. No comparison completely captured her because what Juana Molina does has no exact precedent.

"Sin Guía No" — — is her most representative song: the point where the most radical sound experimentation produces something absolutely beautiful.

Nathy Peluso: The Total Artist

Natalia PelusoNathy Peluso — was born in San Juan, Argentina, in 1993, but grew up in Spain and built her career from Barcelona. She is the most complete example of the new generation of Argentine artists who are global before being local.

Nathy Peluso might be the best example of the Argentine scene in terms of knowing how to interpret different genres and styles. Her album Calambre is a runway where musical references such as hip hop, salsa, reggaeton, R&B, or tango parade, to which Nathy Peluso dedicates herself, taking all the risks.

"Business Woman" — — was her most powerful artistic statement: the most original rap-bolero of recent Latin American pop.

Lali Espósito: The Total Pop Star

Mariana EspósitoLali — was born in Buenos Aires in 1991. She began her career as a child actress in Argentine telenovelas and built one of the most solid pop careers in the country in the 21st century.

Her song "Obsesión" — — won the Gardel de Oro for best song of the year in 2024 — the same year that Miranda! won the Gardel de Oro for best pop album. The confirmation that 21st-century Argentine pop had reached the center of national culture.

Nicki Nicole and the Global Rosario

Nikki Nicole CuccoNicki Nicole — was born in Rosario in 2000 and became at twenty years old the first Argentine trap artist to have a global impact. Her debut album Recuerdos (2020) was the starting point: Spanish trap with a specifically Argentine melancholy that the global market quickly adopted.

"Colocao" — — was her most popular song: the state of emotional bewilderment of heartbreak turned into danceable trap. Rosario — the city of Fito Páez and Lionel Messi — giving the world its next global star.

The Singer-Songwriter Scene: The Intimate as Universal

Parallel to electronic pop and indie from La Plata, 21st-century Argentina also produced a new generation of singer-songwriters who revived the tradition of Spinetta and Fito Páez with the tools of contemporary production.

Kevin Johansen — an Argentine raised in Alaska, with a mix of English and Spanish that turns each song into a linguistic journey — produced in Sur o No Sur (2002) one of the most original albums of Argentine pop of the decade.

Lisandro Aristimuño — from Patagonia, with a countertenor voice and a pop that mixes folklore with electronics — built from the geographical periphery of the country one of the most unique careers of his generation.

Editorial Note: Miranda! won the Gardel de Oro in 2024, more than twenty years after their first performances were described as "the monster of the underground." That trajectory — from the Buenos Aires underground to the most important award in Argentine music — is also the story of local pop in the 21st century: genres and artists that the cultural establishment ignored or despised and that ended up being exactly what that culture needed, even if it took time to recognize it. Argentina has always needed its most important artists to be recognized internationally before being able to recognize them at home. Miranda! broke that cycle by staying in Buenos Aires and winning from there. That is also a revolution — even if no one takes to the streets to celebrate it.

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Next and last chapter — Argentine Series: Trap and Argentine Reggaeton — Bizarrap, María Becerra, Duki and the generation that put Argentina at the center of 21st-century global pop.