AKRIILA has emerged as one of Latin America’s most unpredictable and exciting new artists, a Chilean singer, songwriter, and rapper who’s spent the past several years dismantling genre boundaries across trap, alternative pop, reggaeton, and electronic music. Born Fernanda Sepúlveda in Maipú, Chile, in 2003, she started making music seriously during the COVID-19 pandemic while still in high school, recording herself with a microphone in her mother’s car after being inspired by fellow Chilean artists Princesa Alba and Gianluca.
Her rise has been unusually fast for an artist working outside major English- or even Spanish-language pop centers. After building buzz through early singles and her 2023 debut mixtape 001, AKRIILA found herself booked to perform at Primavera Sound Chile before the lineup was even publicly announced — a testament to how quickly industry insiders had taken notice. Her debut studio album, epistolares, arrived in August 2024, and Rolling Stone noted a clear pivot in her sound from raw trap toward a more polished, commercial reggaeton direction. A deluxe edition, epistolares+, followed in 2025, further cementing her as a leading voice in what’s been dubbed the “neoperreo” movement — a scene that fuses reggaeton’s rhythmic foundation with experimental, abrasive, and club-ready production choices.
2024 also saw AKRIILA perform at both Lollapalooza Chile and Lollapalooza Argentina, major milestones for an artist still in her early twenties. Her momentum has carried directly into 2026 with the single “roger,” released via Atlantic Records — a signal of major-label interest in bringing her sound to a wider international audience. The track, which pairs glitching rock and electronic production with vulnerable lyrics about the hope of finally connecting with someone who understands your emptiness, previews her eagerly anticipated sophomore album, tentatively titled (translated) “lucy looked at the world and noticed it’s spinning.” The music video, directed by visual artist Chris Cadaver, continues her pattern of pairing bold sonic experimentation with equally distinctive visual identity.
AKRIILA is backing the new era with a packed international touring schedule that includes her first-ever US headline run — a significant step for an artist whose fanbase has, until now, been concentrated primarily in Chile and the broader Latin American touring circuit. As reggaeton and Latin alternative music continue to fragment into increasingly specific micro-scenes, AKRIILA stands out as one of the few artists genuinely inventing a new lane rather than working within an established one, drawing comparisons to trailblazers precisely because there’s no direct equivalent to what she’s doing at her level of visibility.
For music editors and fans tracking where Latin alternative music is headed next, AKRIILA offers a rare combination: critical credibility, a genuinely novel sound, and now major-label distribution to match her ambition.
Instagram: @akribb
