Girl Ultra’s new album RRRomeo has a glorious messiness. Not in terms of the production, which, in the hands of Girl Ultra’s Mariana de Miguel herself in partnership with electrofunk duo Chromeo, is a painstakingly arranged collage of dynamic elements. De Miguel’s vocals are, as always, cool and clear within the various assemblages at hand. The beats are polished, and the melodies are filled with clean, brilliant hooks. Consummate pop professionalism abounds. That structure only heightens the album’s wild, beating heart: thematic tangles of passion, love, lust, romance, and heartbreak that have always made for the most exhilarating dancefloor catharsis.
Setting a heady tone at the start of the album is a brief introduction, “¡El Groove de Romeo!” With just a few layers—murmured voice, vinyl crackles, sitar notes, and neon synths—Girl Ultra invokes an almost mystical spirit of desire. Though the song’s only word is the name Romeo, she speaks sensuality into every phoneme, drawing out trilled Rs and letting omeo end in velvety breath.
She spells it out, she whispers it, she calls it coyly, and then the track flows seamlessly into the luminous funk of “Te Caigo”. Here, she alludes just a little to the Shakespearean Romeo by imagining her lover coming to her balcony, but it’s an unquestionably immediate sense of yearning that comes through by way of the driving bassline and de Miguel’s staccato refrain of “baby, te caigo” (“baby, I’m falling for you”).
Joining Girl Ultra and Chromeo on the following track “Mentirasmentiras” is Raquel Berrios of intimate electropop duo Buscabulla. Her dreamy delivery complements de Miguel’s on the album’s most melancholy track, a song about how devastating it is to find out you’ve been lied to when the lies themselves were so beautiful. The sitar samples here seem to mourn with the singers, adding another layer of emotional depth to the chic rhythms.
The title track, “RRRomeo”, is sweaty fantasy. De Miguel moves between verses of melodramatic crooning and seductively spoken chorus. Dubby “Denisse” runs in the opposite direction, telling a story of feminine freedom over warbling, pastel-hued keys and just a touch of lilting pan flute. “Ironía” calls to mind classic techno, dagger-like beats backing Girl Ultra and Chromeo’s Dave 1 as they trade off verses about late-night couplings and the mornings after.
Funk and house producer Jean Tonique joins the mix for scornful “Ramera”, a dance piece with a 2000s indie rock edge. The grand finale is “Tomás”, an early single that’s been an earworm for me since it came out in May 2025 and which is only better for how well it releases the tension that builds up across RRRomeo.
Girl Ultra has always had a strong sense of how to call on retro influences to make music that blazes forward. Shades of new wave and disco are especially strong on RRRomeo, and the production team knows how to use them to make innovative, undeniably catchy pop for the disorderly present day. It’s another Girl Ultra release worth listening to on repeat, and I have a strong feeling it will hold up and inspire decades of future aspiring starlets.