Achachay is what highland Ecuadorians say when the cold catches them, arraray when the heat does. Both words came into Andean Spanish from Quichua, and BRITTA builds “Achachay” on the pair: a love song about wanting someone enough to feel both.

A requinto line, the small high-tuned guitar of Ecuadorian string music, runs over percussion drawn from the country’s Pacific coast and a trap low end. The alt-pop production leaves the guitar exposed and the beat holds a steady pressure under a vocal that stays at the point of anticipation.

Born in Ambato in the central Ecuadorian Andes and based in Los Angeles in the US, Britta has been feeding Ecuadorian traditional forms into dance production for a while: on her single “NON3 (no te dejes avecilla)” she sampled her own voice singing an albazo, the fast triple-time song form of the Ecuadorian highlands, and built a house track around it. “Achachay” points that same working method at Latin alternative, with the Andean Spanish idioms running through the lyric carrying as much of the song’s identity as the requinto and the percussion do.

Listen to “Achachay” HERE