Mauri Tapia picked up guitar at eight and was recording on an old four-track in his family's Oxnard living room by 16, playing every instrument himself — early hip-hop demos and video-game-inspired music eventually gave way to the Latin American rock and vintage funk his parents actually played at home. Peanut Butter Wolf signed him to Stones Throw as Los Retros when he was only 19, after 'Someone to Spend Time With' got him an opening slot on Cuco's west coast tour.
Now 25, married to his high school sweetheart and a father of two, Tapia built Odisea, his debut album, around 1980s Japanese City Pop — a genuinely different creative chapter from the bedroom four-track recordings that started the project, shaped by a settled life rather than a teenager's isolation.