There’s a specific kind of emotional paralysis that “Freno” nails perfectly: knowing you should leave, wanting to leave, but finding yourself stuck in the same place anyway. Joaquina doesn’t just sing about this feeling. She builds an entire world around it.

The Venezuelan-American singer, who took home Best New Artist at the 2023 Latin Grammy Awards, released “Freno” as part of her debut EP “Los Mejores Años,” which also earned a nomination for Best Singer-Songwriter Album that same year. At just 3:34, the track distills a cycle of heartbreak into something achingly familiar. The lyrics circle back on themselves intentionally, with Joaquina admitting she’s “on her fifth try” when the saying goes third time’s the charm. It’s self-aware without being self-pitying, and that balance is harder to strike than it sounds.

What makes “Freno” work beyond its confessional honesty is the production’s restraint. Recorded at Miami’s Art House under the direction of 14-time Grammy and Latin Grammy winner Julio Reyes Copello, the track opens with fingerpicked guitar arpeggios that establish a melancholic foundation before Joaquina even enters. There’s no distortion, no heavy effects. Just natural sustain and space, complementing the synth pads and programmed drums underneath.

The guitar work, performed by Colombian session guitarist Ana Liu, deserves particular attention. A Berklee Presidential Scholarship recipient who studied under Danilo Pérez and John Patitucci, Liu brings a jazz-trained sensitivity to the pop arrangement. Her open voicings evoke hesitation, mirroring the song’s “braking” motif with almost literary precision. When the chorus hits, the guitar shifts to strumming for emphasis, adding percussive weight without ever competing with the vocals. It’s warm, woody, and impossibly tender. Every sustained chord feels like a confession you weren’t quite ready to hear.

That restraint speaks to Copello’s broader philosophy at Art House, where he’s shaped records for Jennifer Lopez, Alejandro Sanz, Marc Anthony, and Ricky Martin. The producer has a gift for knowing when to pull back, for letting a song breathe instead of burying it under layers. With “Freno,” every element exists in service of Joaquina’s voice and the emotional weight she carries. The synths hover rather than push. The drums keep time without demanding attention. It’s the kind of production that sounds simple until you try to replicate it.

Joaquina’s Latin Grammy win for Best New Artist wasn’t a fluke or an industry bet on potential. “Freno” and the rest of “Los Mejores Años” showed an artist who arrived fully formed, with a clear perspective on love, loss, and the messy space between. She writes like someone who’s lived more than her years would suggest, finding specificity in moments that other writers would gloss over. The image of watching someone look at another person from across the room, knowing it shouldn’t hurt but feeling it anyway, that’s not a generic heartbreak lyric. That’s observation. The Recording Academy recognized what listeners already knew: Joaquina isn’t building toward something. She’s already there.

That maturity shows in her songwriting instincts. The best breakup songs don’t dramatize the ending. They capture the long, frustrating middle, where you’re still stuck with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. Joaquina, barely into her twenties, already knows this.

The Quarantined are released their third studio EP, “Aversion to Normalcy,” today, and it’s not the kind of record you put on for background music. Created by Sean Martin, a former airborne infantryman and Iraq War veteran, the album confronts trauma head-on, pulling from his experiences in combat and the disorienting aftermath of trying to rebuild a life once you’re home. It’s grunge-heavy, emotionally direct, and built around the idea that “normal” is just a polite lie we tell ourselves. What makes it work is that Martin isn’t trying to package his experience into something digestible. He’s just refusing to look away.

The album arrives with momentum that’s hard to ignore. The Quarantined have racked up over 30 million views across TikTok, with one clip of “Skeleton Chair” alone hitting 1.1 million+ views. On Spotify, they’ve pulled in 500,000 streams, and their viral reach has sparked conversations about trauma, forgiveness, and what it actually means to heal. For a band working outside the traditional industry machine, those numbers say something about how their message is connecting.

Martin doesn’t soften his subject matter. Tracks like “Skeleton Chair,” “Shadow (on my back),” and “Nemesis (friend of mine)” trace a path through chaos, self-destruction, and the slow, unglamorous work of choosing to survive. He’s not writing from a place of having figured it all out. He’s writing from the middle of it, which is what makes the record feel urgent rather than reflective. There’s no tidy resolution here, just the raw acknowledgment that some battles don’t end when you come home.

The album was recorded at Blackbird Studios and Sound Emporium in Nashville, two facilities known for handling heavyweight rock projects. Producer Nathan Yarborough, who’s worked with Alice in Chains, Korn, Halestorm, and Evanescence, handled engineering and production. The lineup includes Jerry Roe on drums, Luis Espalliat on bass, and Zack Rapp from Dream Theater on lead guitar and violins, with Martin covering vocals and guitar. It’s a setup that balances aggression with precision, letting the songs hit hard without losing their emotional core.

In a Veterans Day post on Facebook, Martin didn’t hold back about what this album means and what it cost. “You know, the things you thank us for today, have lifetime consequences for those who carry the burden,” he wrote. “I always thought if you’re gonna thank someone, better be specific about what and why, otherwise it has no meaning except as a false absolution for yourself.” It’s a pointed critique of performative gratitude, and it underscores what “Aversion to Normalcy” is actually about: rejecting easy answers and comfortable narratives in favor of something messier and more honest.

Martin pulls from punk rock, grunge, and metal, but what ties it together is his refusal to romanticize any of it. This isn’t protest music in the traditional sense. There are no slogans, no clear villains. Instead, it’s an invitation to sit with discomfort, to look at the parts of life that don’t fit into neat categories, and to find meaning in survival itself.

The Quarantined also support the Free2Luv movement, working on anti-bullying efforts, mental health advocacy, and music education for veterans and their families. It tracks with what the album’s already doing: making room for people who are still figuring it out, still fighting through it.

“Aversion to Normalcy” doesn’t offer answers. It offers witness, which might be more valuable anyway. In a culture that constantly demands we move on, heal up, and get back to normal, Martin’s album asks a better question: what if normal was never the goal in the first place?

“Aversion to Normalcy” is available now on all streaming platforms. You can follow The Quarantined on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook at @thequarantined, visit their website here, or stream their projects on Spotify.

There’s a tension in Kaziboii’s music that most artists spend years trying to figure out. How do you make something hit hard enough for the club while still carrying real weight? How do you blend the aggressive punch of drill with the kind of soul that actually means something? For the Nigerian artist now based in the UK, that balance isn’t something he’s chasing. It’s just how he hears music.

Raised between Lagos and Port Harcourt with a mother who kept music constantly playing, Kaziboii didn’t just grow up around sound. He studied it. As a kid, he bought Michael Jackson lyric sheets just to understand how songs worked. That early obsession turned into high school bands, homemade beats, and eventually his first studio track “Carolina” in 2018. That session confirmed what he already knew.

By 2020, he was performing at beer carnivals when Mc Concept (aka Oga Boss) saw him and started booking more shows. He went by Kazola back then, but switched to Kaziboii in 2021, the same year he moved to the UK to study Music Production and Performance at the University of Chester. He wanted to understand the technical side of what he’d been doing instinctively for years.

His sound pulls from Wizkid’s melodies, Timaya’s street energy, and Burna Boy’s fusion approach, but what comes out is distinctly his. Afrobeats meets Afro Drill meets Afro Hip-Hop in a way that refuses to pick a lane. His seven-track EP “BODY TO BODY” dropped on August 19, 2025, running just under 20 minutes with standout tracks “Jemimah” and “Wetin Day Do Me.” The project featured Duncan Mighty and Fiokee, and it showed exactly what happens when you stop treating genres like borders.

Right now he’s working on “Too Late” featuring Qx The Great and “Sideways” featuring Faceless, both international collaborations that continue his approach of turning real experiences into tracks that work on the dance floor without losing their emotional core. For Kaziboii, the goal has always been simple: make people feel something while they move.

That’s the thing about blending drill’s intensity with genuine soul. It only works if both sides are real. Kaziboii isn’t softening the edges or adding emotion as an afterthought. He’s proving that energy and feeling don’t cancel each other out. They make each other stronger.

Follow Kaziboii on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and stream his music on Spotify.