I’m gonna fuck this up. I don’t know how to write about this wonderful musician. I don’t have the depth of knowledge necessary to wax on about a Spanish-singing Argentinian auteur. Or maybe I just don’t have the usual tropes I fall back on? Maybe this is more of a challenge than I’m used to, and that voice in the back of my head is balking at needing to go outside of my comfort zone? Growth at age almost-52 is harder than you might think. Here goes nothing.

Juana Molina is not the kind of artist you’d typically find in the Top 31. Living in Buenos Aires, 64 years old, creating dreamy “folktronica” that she typically sings in her native Spanish – she’s not the typical indie musician I am drawn to by any measure. And yet, with her eighth album DOGA, she’s made what I feel is the 20th best album of 2025.

Molina’s path to college radio play across the world started in 1961, when she was born to a tango-singing father and an actress mother. Unable to make money in a career in music, she focused on the stage, quickly reaching some fame in Argentina as a sketch comedy actress. Apparently in the early 90s she was quite popular across the country, and at the height of her acting career she quit, finally able to turn her focus back to the music that was overwhelming her psyche.

Since releasing her debut album, Rara, in 1996, her climb to recognition outside of Argentina grew slowly. That album did not find an audience in her home country, but she was undeterred. A quick jaunt to Los Angeles allowed her the space to put together her second album, 2000’s Segundo, which caught the attention of David Byrne (see #27, who as you remember founded world-music focused record label Luaka Bop). He asked Molina to open for him on his tour that year. Her audience grew slowly over her next three albums, expanding her global presence into Europe and Japan. Her fifth album, 2008’s Un dia, got an unexpected boost when her music was featured in the background of a Radiolab episode in 2008 titled “Sperm.” Due to an outpouring of inquiries about that music, the popular podcast ran a whole segment featuring Molina in 2009, adding an even greater amount of US-based attention to the singer / songwriter.

Her sixth and seventh albums, 2013’s Wed 21 and 2017’s Halo were well-received, and while I know I had heard of the artist by this time, I still hadn’t given her or her music any attention. Then DOGA came out in November. And this time, thanks to a friend who earlier in the year had forced me to listen to a Juana Molina song¹, I paid closer attention. It may have taken me nearly 30 years to come around, but I’m so glad I finally did.

DOGA is one hell of an album. Molina’s soft-spoken voice sounds to my non-Spanish speaking ears like an additional instrument, delicately laced across the top of intricate, off-kilter, mostly-electronic beats. Hit play on the video for “Desinhumano,” above. I hear what sound like influences of Björk (Icelandic, 60) and The Knife / Fever Ray (Karen Dreijer, Swedish, 50), but as Molina is older than both of those huge, international female artists, I wonder if I should actually be saying they’re influenced by her. I can confidently say if you’ve been a fan of either of those artists in the past, then Juana Molina is right up your alley.

It’s a rare thing to come to an artist for the first time on their 8th album and 30 years into their musical career. Normally at this point, if an artist makes it to their eighth album, they’ve settled into their “only the super fans will dig this” era of their career, no longer able to bring in new fans the way their earlier albums may have. Molina and her album DOGA is clearly different. Hopefully you hear it, too. And I hope this review did justice to her and this fantastic album.

^{1. In January 2026, I created a new way for new music to enter my life. I gathered a small group of friends for the purposes of sharing music between us. We dubbed it “Record Cabinet,” and decided to gather every ~6 weeks or so and bring two songs to share based on a theme as established by that session’s host. For the October “Foreign Exchange” theme, a friend (hi Brent!) brought the Juana Molina song “El Perro” from Segundo as his song representative of “a song from the Southern Hemisphere. I love all the different ways new music can make it to my ears.↩}