duendita

For Candace Camacho, the studio is a state of mind. “I’ve written some of my favorite songs on my bike or while I’m walking or on the bus,” the Queens native, who heads up the musical collective duendita, said. “I try to always be available and expressing, whenever it comes.”

The fluidity of her approach to songwriting is reflected in the music itself: loose, textural R&B, as conversational and ephemeral as cartoon thought bubbles snatched from the air. Clocking in at under 20 minutes, duendita’s new album, Existential Thottie, succinctly captures the tenuous conditions of young adulthood—being lustful, hormonal, depressed, and broke—with all the emotional heft and humor that its title suggests.

To make music, Camacho—who now splits her time between New York and Berlin, and also regularly travels to her ancestral home of Puerto Rico—relies on tools that keep her mobile, caffeinated, and in tune with the world around her. These are her essentials.