Beto Villares

Nova Música Paulista (literally "new Paulista music") is a contemporary wave from São Paulo that renews MPB’s songwriter tradition by blending it with samba’s rhythmic DNA, indie/alternative rock timbres, jazz harmonies, and Afro‑Brazilian percussion and spirituality. Rather than a single fixed style, it is a porous scene of composers, singers, bands, and producer‑collectives that prize experimentation, crate‑digging, and collaboration. Gently overdriven guitars, woodwinds and brass, atabaques and drum kits, electronics, and dense vocal arrangements coexist with sophisticated songwriting. The result feels unmistakably paulistano: urban, hybrid, and cosmopolitan, but grounded in Brazilian rhythmic memory and social realities.

New MPB (Nova Música Popular Brasileira in English usage) is a 2010s–2020s wave that refreshes classic MPB’s songwriting craft with indie, R&B, hip‑hop, and electronic production. It keeps the genre’s hallmark: sophisticated harmony, intimate vocals, and poetry‑forward lyrics in Portuguese. Sonically, you’ll hear nylon‑string guitars and Rhodes pianos beside drum machines, 808s, and warm synths. Rhythms nod to samba, bossa nova, baião, and funk carioca while embracing modern pop swing and hip‑hop backbeats. The result is stylish, urban, and contemporary—romantic and reflective, yet danceable and groove‑savvy.