Last year, Mexican singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada was working on the follow-up to her critically acclaimed 2022 debut album, Marchita . But midway through the process, she hit a wall. It wasn’t that she couldn’t write anymore. She didn’t want to.

The success of Marchita brought the kind of opportunities that Estrada — the daughter of luthiers from the verdant hills of Coatepec, Veracruz — had dreamed of just a few years earlier. She was touring the world, opening for artists like Andrew Bird and Iron & Wine, and she had been nominated for awards at the Latin Grammys, walking away with Best New Artist that fall.

But the year also came with the kind of struggles she never could’ve imagined. First, she had to deal with a spinal cord injury brought on by exhaustion. Then, she

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