Cuco

Cuco, born Omar Banos in Inglewood and raised in Hawthorne, California, is a Mexican-American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who became a defining voice of bedroom pop and Chicano indie music in the late 2010s. The only child of Mexican immigrant parents, he took his stage name from the Spanish pronunciation of cuckoo, a childhood nickname from his mother, and began writing and recording lo-fi songs as a teenager before adopting the Cuco moniker after an earlier project called Heavy Trip.

His music blends dreamy, washed-out synths, hazy guitars and bilingual songwriting, moving fluidly between English and Spanish across tracks like Lo Que Siento, Amor de Siempre and Bossa No Sé. Influences ranging from Tame Impala and Ariel Pink to classic Chicano rap and 1960s psychedelic rock inform his warm, nostalgic sound, which helped him build a devoted grassroots fanbase largely through social media and DIY releases before signing to a major label.

Beyond music, Cuco has extended his creative identity into a streetwear line called Fantasy's Easy Living, reinforcing his role as a cultural figure for young Mexican-American and Latino listeners who found in his music a rare bilingual, genre-blurring reflection of their own bicultural experience.