Psychedelic rock band Pinto Sunshine writes music that excites, working through their upbeat and groovy vibes to bring back the visceral live scene energy from the 2000s.
The band, composed of Santiago Cabeza on guitar and vocals, Chase Perales on bass, Noah Pappo on lead guitar, Priscilla Wheeler on keys and Colton Clements on drums, started officially writing music together around August of 2021.
However, most members knew each other and played in different bands around Atlanta before Pinto Sunshine.
“I started writing some songs a few years ago,” Cabeza said. “And then I started meeting up with Chase, and the next thing we knew, we were adding new members and playing together as an official band.”
Pinto Sunshine released their first single, “Rango,” on January 14th. The song’s lyrics describe the journey of a psychedelic cowboy, and the song’s sound has influences of several different types of genres combined to create an upbeat, latin-like groove.
Cabeza based the song on a psychedelic experience he encountered. Several cacti surrounded Cabeza during the trip, which freaked him out a little bit.
Although the experience with the cacti was not the most positive, Cabeza still discussed how the trip further inspired “Rango” and other songs the band is currently working on.
“The song itself is about the journey of a psychedelic cowboy. I was tripping one time with some cacti around me, and they were starting to like, try and get me,” Cabeza said.
“It was an intense trip, not negative, though. I was just surrounded by like eight cacti that were standing over me, and it freaked me out a little bit, but it was also how I got the idea for this song.”
“Rango” possesses a musical groove and depth that several songs tend to lack. The song begins with a funky, upbeat tempo that then transitions into a chorus that hits listeners with a punk-rock punch with underlying notes of Latin-inspired grooves.
Like an acid trip, “Rango” layers different genres to push listeners into different zones and headspaces as the song continues.
Pinto Sunshine focuses on creating music that pushes musical boundaries by mixing, creating, and playing around with various genres, sounds, instruments and vibes to create unique and mind-expanding songs.
When writing music, Pinto Sunshine uses each band member’s music taste, abilities, and creativity to create many new and distinctive pieces.
“Usually, how it starts is I’ll come up with a riff and maybe a melody, and then I bring it to the rest of the band, and it gets put together,” Cabeza said.
“There are more songs that are going to come out that have different influences from different band members, but for ‘Rango’ in particular, we just kind of played around with a lot of different styles and ideas.”
Pinto Sunshine is working on several new songs that will be released later this year, and they will be playing at Smith’s Olde Bar on Thursday, February 24th, alongside A.D Blanco, Bummer Hill, and P.M. Tiger.
