All it took was one photograph of Estevan and Alejandro Gutiérrez’s father standing in Machu Picchu in 1987 for the brothers, known as Hermanos Gutiérrez, to find inspiration for their next project.
Their studio album, Los Ojos del Cóndor, which translates to “the eyes of the condor,” arrived Friday (Sept. 25) as a love letter to the stories, sounds and energetic magnetism of South America’s Andes mountain range.
“I think it was a natural calling that we felt before we went to the studio,” Alejandro said in an interview the brothers had with Billboard in June. “We felt like from the desert, from the cosmic sound that we had in the past, we just wanted to feel and discover a new landscape. And there’s not another place that is as strong and powerful as the Andes in South America because it connects so many countries from north to south, and it felt like a dedication to this whole region.”
Los Ojos del Cóndor is a 10-track album that connects Hermanos Gutiérrez’s cinematic work through a recurring musical motif, sometimes emerging through guitar, while other times through organ. This creates a sense of movement and continuity across the record. The brothers’ guitars weave through the arrangements, with Estevan playing every track on the nylon-string guitar his father gave him when he was 8. Alejandro also brings a new sound to the mix by playing the charango, an Andean stringed instrument, on several songs.
Produced by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, it’s the third studio album released by the Ecuadorian-Swiss duo that Auerbach sits behind, after first producing their 2022 breakout project El Bueno y El Malo and their 2024 LP Sonido Cósmico. The latter reached the Billboard 200 with its spacious and deep dreamy sound that intertwines guitar melodies and gentle Latin pulses driven by subtle percussion.
“When we recorded in Nashville, Dan was there, and he was kind of supervising, but also he let us do what we wanted to do,” explains Estevan. “That feeling of having the freedom of being creative but knowing that the boss is approving everything — that felt really good. So this time at the studio, we felt very comfortable and I mean, all the time, but this was very special.”
For the brothers, producing such an intentional project felt like a gamble.
Los Ojos del Condor spotlights the region that spans and connects Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. The name also holds cultural significance. Historically, the condor holds a sacred place in many indigenous Andean traditions, including those of the Incas, who considered it a ruler of the upper world and a messenger to the sun god. Today, it remains a symbol of power and freedom across the Andes.
They weren’t sure they would nail the concept, and the answer came when they traveled to Peru.
“We wrote the album, and then we did the trip, and it was a crazy experience,” says Estevan. “When we were at Machu Picchu or, like, in general in Peru, we felt, ‘Hey, this album is from here,’ so it was a very nice confirmation for the work that we did. We love the album, but we weren’t sure. I mean, ‘Is it going to fit at the end?’ We showed it to some native people, and they loved it, and they said, ‘Oh, this is from here,’ and we were like, ‘No, we’re from Switzerland.’”
The project arrives alongside a new video for “Alma Mia,” which includes scenes of the brothers recording at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville. The project was created and animated by Robert Schober, who has directed music videos for Metallica (“All Nightmare Long”), Green Day (“Stray Heart”) and The Killers (“The Cowboy’s Christmas Ball”).
“Los Andes”, “Los Ojos del Condor” and “Canto Andino” are also standout tracks. The latter moves between bright melodies and darker slide guitar tones, reflecting the Andes’ changing weather. On the title track, galloping rhythms and lingering lap steel notes conjure the image of a condor soaring overhead.
Born in Zurich to an Ecuadorian mother and a Swiss father, the Gutiérrez brothers also have Peruvian heritage through their great-grandfather. When Alejandro was 20 and Estevan was 28, they spent a year in Ecuador with their mother’s family. It was there that they began making music together. The idea of continuing to weave their South American roots into their music is evident. Their album titles have always been in Spanish and their signature style continuously nods to the culture.
With Los Ojos del Condor, Hermanos Gutiérrez looked to dive deeper into those roots while holding on to who they were when they were just getting started.
“It is something new, but at the end we didn’t want to create something completely new. We wanted to go back to the beginnings of Hermanos Gutiérrez, when my brother and I — it was just two guitars, and we didn’t do a lot of overdubs and we didn’t use a lot of studio musicians. We really loved the album Hijos Del Sol so we wanted to create something from that time,” says Estevan.
See the track list for Los Ojos del Cóndor below:
1. Canto Andino
2. Los Ojos Del Cóndor
3. Alma Mia
4. Ciudad Inca
5. Yanantin
6. La Danza Del Viento
7. Tren Macho
8. Waway
9. Los Andes
10. Dios De La Paz
