Each note and slide whispers like the wind through the Andes Mountains.

The music becomes a call between the wavering strings of hollow-bodied guitars, transporting listeners through the places and emotions that have shaped brothers Estevan and Alejandro Gutiérrez, known together as Hermanos Gutiérrez. On their latest single, “Canto Andino,” the duo deepen their connection to atmospheric textures while sharing their heritage through rhythm, influence, and memory, blending an earthly tether to nature with an otherworldly sonic palette full of warmth and heart.

The Swiss-Ecuadorian brothers turn more directly toward their South American roots on “Canto Andino,” drawing from their mother’s native Ecuador as well as their great-grandmother’s Peruvian heritage.

Los Ojos del Cóndor - Hermanos Gutiérrez — Los Ojos del Cóndor – Hermanos Gutiérrez

With the release of “Canto Andino,” Hermanos Gutiérrez have also announced their next album, Los Ojos del Cóndor, out September 25 via Easy Eye Sound. Produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys at his Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville, the 10-track record continues the duo’s exploration of the landscapes, sounds, and cultures that have long inspired them. Where their earlier work often evoked the wide-open spaces of the American West, Los Ojos del Cóndor redirects that cinematic language toward the rhythms and textures of the Andes.

“That melody you hear in the chorus, that’s very happy, and then it turns back into the dark, low tones of the slide,” Alejandro shares. “It’s cool because that’s actually how the weather works in the Andes. You’ve got sunshine, and then all of a sudden it’s so cloudy and looks like it might rain or even snow. ‘Canto Andino’ is a calling from that landscape that inspired us.”

That sense of contrast has long been central to Hermanos Gutiérrez’s artistry. Across their fifth album and Easy Eye Sound debut, El Bueno Y El Malo (2022), and its follow-up, Sonido Cósmico (2024), nylon-string guitars, steel slides, and tremolo effects have helped the brothers transform physical landscapes into expansive instrumental worlds. “Canto Andino” pushes that journey further inward, drawing on the Andes as both a geographical inspiration and an emotional compass. Estevan plays throughout the new album on the nylon-string guitar his father gave him when he was eight, while Alejandro introduces the charango, a small Andean string instrument heard on “Canto Andino” and several other tracks.

That movement inward gives the brothers’ expanding musical world a soul-searching quality, as landscape becomes a means of tracing memory, identity, and belonging.

“This is a love letter to South America,” Alejandro says. “What we want to do with this record is to invite people to come on another journey with us, this time through the Andes, and to create a curiosity for this culture and for this part of the world.”

That journey is captured in the album’s title itself.

Named after its title track, Los Ojos del Cóndor evokes the sensation of looking down upon the Andes from above. “The condor is the bird of the Andes,” Alejandro explains. “It’s like seeing something from that perspective and appreciating the beauty.”

In the distance, alternating percussion anchors the composition as bright nylon guitar lines climb toward the horizon, guiding listeners through the song’s unfolding landscape. An acoustic guitar figure opens the track before a drifting organ enters, while toward the end, wah-like guitar textures emerge, weaving together harmony, place, and memory. Through its wordless storytelling, “Canto Andino” underscores the importance of documenting and sharing cultural roots – not only one’s own, but those that connect people across geography, history, and upbringing. In that sense, heritage becomes something connective: Rooted in particular places and families, yet capable of reaching far beyond them.

That interplay extends to the brothers themselves. “As brothers, we are very similar, but then also we have different tastes,” Estevan says. “For example, I love salsa, my brother loves cumbia. For somebody that doesn’t know Latin music, they think, ‘It’s almost the same.’ But it’s not. So whenever we compose new stuff, you can always hear that difference.”

Those differences are reflected throughout Los Ojos del Cóndor, whose musical vocabulary draws from traditions including Argentine milonga and Peruvian-Colombian cumbia alongside the brothers’ signature surf, western, and Latin guitar influences.

Rather than smoothing those differences away, Hermanos Gutiérrez allow them to shape the music.

On “Canto Andino,” their individual influences meet within a shared vision, creating a piece that celebrates where they come from while continuing to expand where their music can take them. There is light in that movement, too – a sense that following those sounds deeper into their roots can illuminate the path ahead.

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