Bad Bunny shook up Chuwi’s world. Now they’re harnessing the moment

Most acts wouldn’t even dare to dream of performing in front of thousands of people at one single stadium, let alone dozens of them, before their debut studio album has even come out. But that’s precisely what’s happened to Puerto Rican quartet Chuwi.

Ever since the band – comprised of siblings Willy, Lorén and Wester Aldarondo Torres, plus Wester’s school friend Adrián López Soto – received the offer to feature on Bad Bunny’s monumental album ‘Debí Tirar Más Fotos’ in 2024, they’ve been on a rollercoaster of pivotal shifts. “It’s hard to explain how it all felt,” Willy says emotionally of working on the album’s ‘Weltita’.

“We were just starting in the local scene in Puerto Rico, and suddenly something like this got dropped onto you. We obviously had to put the initial shock to the side and focus on the song, but after, it’s like, ‘What on earth is going to happen now?’ Nobody could have predicted what happened after, where we would be, and where we are now.”

Since then, all sense of time has been warped. Following the release of the album, Chuwi also embarked on a world tour around Latin America, Australia and Europe with Bad Bunny as the star’s only opening act. After almost a year on the road, the adventure came to a close just hours before they hopped on a call with NME, with a two-day finale in Puerto Rico’s Hiram Bithorn Stadium.

“It was euphoric,” Wester says, adding that the experience of having brought a taste of home to the world and then bringing a piece of each place back to where it all started is priceless. López Soto agrees, further pointing to the emotional aspect of the shows. “There’s a point in all our shows when we perform ‘Tierra’ where I bring out the Puerto Rican resistance flag and that of the country we’d be performing in. Having the Puerto Rican flag and the resistance flag together, and everyone deeply understanding both of them, was unforgettable.”

Formed in the municipality of Isabela in the northwest of Puerto Rico by Willy, Lorén, and Wester, Chuwi started as an experimental project during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the trio recording most of their work in their parents’ bedroom on the island – their de facto studio until very recently. It wasn’t until late 2021, when they were first invited to play live, that Mayagüez native López Soto joined as percussionist.

Music has always been around for the members of Chuwi. In the Aldarondo Torres household, their father was the first to introduce Willy to production. “He used to recreate Jesús Adrián Romero songs from scratch for the church we grew up in,” Willy tells NME. Their mum, he says, is to credit for all their eclectic references. “She would drive us to and from school while playing all sorts of music – from Latin and Caribbean music to American pop and beyond,” he adds. For López Soto, meanwhile, music was almost instinctive. “I’d take our pot and turn it upside down to create my own drum set, so my mum signed me up for music lessons from the fourth grade up until I graduated with Wester,” he shares.

While Caribbean rhythms and Puerto Rican staples are key to Chuwi’s references (they cite everyone from Juan Luis Guerra and Silvio Rodríguez to Haciendo Punto en Otro Son, Ricky Martin, and Marc Anthony), there’s another layer that permeates the music the quartet makes, blending local styles like salsa and plena with an indie modern vein and the poignant storytelling of ’80s Spanish pop band Mecano, whose influence, Willy says, is key in their song ‘Mundi’. Wester also lists the Black Eyed Peas, Skrillex, Empire Of The Sun, and Foster The People, to name but a few, as additional inspirations. “It was all that mix throughout different phases of our lives that united to create us,” he explains.

That amalgam is most prominent in their early hazy R&B experiments, like their first song ‘Somnia’, which features the siblings’ family dog, Chewie, on its cover. Chewie came into their lives after their sister Álani, who’s not in the group, brought him home as a puppy. He is still in the family to this day and has inadvertently become a huge chunk of the band’s DNA, serving as the inspiration for their name. “We were about to upload the song to platforms and then were like, ‘Wait, what’s the group name going to be?’ Then we saw Chewie lying in bed in our parents’ room, and I remember being like, ‘Fuck it, Chuwi,’” Wester recounts. The decision to change the spelling from the original Chewbacca nod to a “more Hispanic-sounding” Chuwi, much like their 2026 single ‘Plei’, was a no-brainer.

“I hope to empower the next generation to keep making music from our home” – Willy Aldarondo Torres

Since their early R&B and downtempo experiments, and perhaps partly because of Adrián’s introduccion, Chuwi have found their groove in the Latin space, drawing on their early plena and salsa influences, which they solidified with their EPs ‘Pan’ (2022) and ‘Tierra’ (2024).

“After releasing ‘Pan’ and ‘Tierra’, we started making the rounds in Puerto Rico’s local circuit,” Wester says. “People started speaking of us as a band, and we just took it in stride. But I still feel like we are transitioning from [experimenting at home to being a live band].”

Chuwi have undoubtedly leaned a lot more into the live aspect this past year since being on the road with Bad Bunny, while also putting on their own concerts and small tours on the side. Between the countless stops, they have had time to ponder and grow, and all those reflections will appear on their upcoming debut album, which is set to arrive later this year. Willy teases that the project will be rooted in Caribbean music but will also feature “foreign” sounds from “all around”. “They cross borders and time zones,” he adds.

The decision to release an album rather than another EP, when more eyes than ever are on Chuwi, is not coincidental. “An album is like an introduction to a wider and newer audience, and we felt like it was time,” Willy says. “This album closes a sort of trilogy that we started with the two previous EPs, and this being the third chapter, it deserved to be a longer project.”

As their worldview expanded on tour, the project grew sonically, with the final tweaks made on the road. The album, they tease, is their most ambitious and political project to date “in a lot of ways”. Willy adds: “We don’t know what the reception is going to be, but we feel really happy and proud with what we have made with this album. We love the songs, and we hope people love them too.”

If you look at their discography, the gradual shift where Chuwi’s songs became more claimant is palpable, singing about life in the PR and the diaspora, but it wasn’t a conscious, premeditated decision. “We started making music because we missed creating and we missed being surrounded by music,” Lorén, who was absent from the main interview, tells NME in a voice note the day after. “All we could sing about was what we were living and experiencing. We didn’t have anything else to talk about. Our music is now viewed through a social-political lens, and that’s very cool. We love it, but really, it came from the general intent of living normal lives and realising that, in our normal lives, things are missing.

“The promises we were told as children are not real. The world has changed. It’s not easy owning a house. It’s not easy paying rent and having to buy a car because there’s no public transport system. They are real situations for us, so it’s easier to write about them than love. It’s important for us, and that’s where our musical muse is born.”

It’s that unapologetic desire to fight for and sing of what they know and believe in that has earned Chuwi a spot on ones-to-watch lists, including the NME 100 of 2026. Whether on or off the stage, each time they get a chance, they use their voice, hoping it will make people enjoy it and lead others to feel safe doing the same.

“My hope is for more Caribbean music to be made,” Willy says. “For it not to become stagnant as it has, and is still sadly happening. I hope to, in some way or another, empower the next generation to keep making music from our home and maybe speak about things that make them feel as strong[ly] as we do.”

Chuwi’s debut album will be released later this year.

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