· San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora
Songs within Songs
Moisés López Núñez, 26, doesn’t move through music in straight lines. His listening, like his playing, wanders, doubles back, and opens into sudden turns. The nearly six-hour Spotify playlist he shares comes across less like a curated sequence and more like a lived-in space: one where memory, instinct, and interest are constantly in motion.
“I’d describe my playlist as a rollercoaster of tastes because even though I don’t necessarily listen to dance music, there are danceable songs, melancholic songs, there’s a whole range of tastes. When I listen to music, I never worry about the song that comes next. I understand and appreciate the artist’s work. So, you’re not going to be able to predict the types of songs that you’ll hear.”
That unpredictability resembles the way López Núñez came to music in the first place. Born in San Luis Río Colorado and raised between northern Mexico and Guerrero, his earliest encounter with sound came not from formal training but from curiosity, tapping a xylophone in a Los Angeles hospital as a child, then gravitating toward a piano simply because it was there. What followed was not a straight line. It was a series of self-directed experiments: piano lessons after school, teaching himself guitar by ear, moving through bass, accordion, and whatever instrument he could get his hands on.
Music, for him, is less about mastery than connection. He describes playing as a physical and emotional outlet. It’s a way to locate himself in a feeling and let it play out on the keyboard. Even now, he approaches songs by translating them, reworking them, and finding their emotional core. Genres blur: classical sits next to rock, metal next to pop, all expressed through a sensibility that favors expression over purity.
That same openness defines his playlist.
“I recommend the playlist not because it will help you understand my tastes, but because it will give you an idea of my inspirations regardless of genre,” he said.
“Listen to it on shuffle.”