Performing at a recent Interscope Records party in L.A. — among the American label’s rising Mexican stars — is a far cry from how Mexican singer-songwriter Macario Martínez started his 2025.
The 24-year-old singer-songwriter had been working as a street sweeper in Mexico City, but with the aspirations of becoming a professional musician. In January, he decided to share his song “Sueña Lindo, Corazón” and a bit of his background in a TikTok video.
“Life asks a lot from you, and I am only a street sweeper who wants you to listen to his music,” he wrote in text that played over a video of him driving around Mexico City, doing his then-job.
And the people listened. A lot of people, in fact.
Within a few days, the video had been viewed over 5 million times on TikTok alone. It now counts over 49 million views.
Martínez’s folksy croon, vulnerable in the way it quakes, helped create a lovable persona for the musician.
In an internet landscape where hate and division often prevail — perhaps more than ever in this chaotic and devastating year — Martínez was feted online for the sincerity of “Sueña Lindo, Corazón.”
“I’m happy that everything has been going well and everything in my career is growing little by little,” the singer told The Times. “I know I had a huge moment where the whole world saw me, but now it’s time to get to work and to carve out a space in the larger music scene.”
As with any other “overnight success,” Martínez had been grinding away in Mexico City’s colorful music scene for years before he got his breakout moment.
Born and raised in the Mexican capital, Martínez cultivated a passion for music with the support of his mother, who bought him his first guitar at age 8 and enrolled him in publicly funded arts programs throughout his adolescence.
At 15, he took a step back from music to dabble in other artistic fields like photography and short-form video directing, which helped expand his friend group in the art scene.
“I would get into concerts — sometimes without permission — [to] take photos and occasionally conduct interviews with artists,” Martínez said. “Sometimes the artists would like my photos and upload my photos onto their accounts. It was then that I began to form friendships with many independent bands, which inspired me to write some of my first songs.”
It wasn’t long after Martínez turned 18 that he leaned fully into the world of music. Even his personal catalog of musical references was, by his own admission, very limited.
One of the most ear-opening experiences for the young artist was listening to the soundtrack of the 2013 Ben Stiller-led film “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” The movie about a man who creatively inserts himself into fantastical daydreams, in order to emotionally survive his boring day job, put Martínez on to many major artists he had never actively sought out.
“It was the first time I had heard David Bowie, Arcade Fire and José González,” he said. “It opened me up to a lot of new sounds.”
After finding himself in an emotionally turbulent moment in late 2024, Martínez teamed up with his friend who had more advanced recording materials than he did to record the singles “Nuestra Casa en el Mar” and the breakout “Sueña Lindo, Corazón.”
In January, both songs were released and were well-received by his small but mighty fan base. He mentioned that he had around 3,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and was garnering “at most” a couple hundred likes on his social media posts.
“I was happy with just that,” he admitted. “Even if I’m not making one peso from this, something is working because people are coming to my small shows.”
It was because of that local outpouring of support for his singles that he decided to create and post his star-making TikTok video.
“I recorded that video at the end of January and it was really the culmination of what I learned from making videos, like getting cinematic shots, and what I knew about music,” Martínez said. “I didn’t know how to really use TikTok, but I made the video and liked how it came out.”
He shared the video with a few friends before posting it online to see if it was worth sharing with the world as promotion for his music. The songwriter was mostly nervous that members of the local scene that he wanted to be included in at the time would ridicule the sincerity of the video. (He would eventually realize these scenesters were just overly judgmental haters.)
“I had doubts, but I think it was the best decision I could’ve made, which was to fearlessly be who I am and not care about what others say about me,” he said.
That decision has led to innumerable appearances on TV and radio. Martínez joined Mexican indie-folk star Kevin Kaarl on his 2025 Ultra Sodade tour, then collaborated with “Ella Baila Sola” hitmakers Eslabon Armado on their song “Esa Noche.”
He also leveraged the moment to embark on a U.S. tour earlier this fall, with a couple of stops in L.A. — including at the Hollywood Bowl in September and the Roxy Theatre in October.
On the morning of the Roxy show, NPR published his Tiny Desk Concert performance as part of its “El Tiny” Hispanic Heritage month series. The recorded concert found the singer back in an intimate musical setting, reminiscent of those he frequently played back in Mexico City.
“I felt it was a beautiful challenge,” he said of playing for NPR. “To simply put yourself out there and sing with all the world watching is nerve-racking and exhilarating because you feel the energy of all the artists who have performed on that stage before you.”
The singer’s soft yet commanding presence was on full display at both his Tiny Desk show and his set at the Roxy. Except for a few words of gratitude extended to the audience, Martínez let his music do the bulk of the talking.
Two weeks after El Tiny, the artist released his first LP, titled “Si Mañana Ya No Estoy.” The 11-track project includes songs he’s had saved on his laptop since 2019, plus several others that were written in the month leading to the album’s recording.
The collection of songs read as a chronicle of a 20-something who is learning to navigate the world through love and loss, while incorporating sounds specific to Martínez’s personal background.
“I tried to use a lot of traditional Mexican sounds in this album,” he said. “They call it son huasteco, which comes from the Huasteca region of Mexico that includes Veracruz, San Luis Potosí and several other states. It uses instruments like jarana jarochas, quijadas and cajones de zapateado.”
Martínez married those traditional sounds with elements of dream pop, folk, ambient and pop — citing Damien Rice, Beach House and Sufjan Stevens as some of his most prominent non-Mexican influences.
“It’s just a mix of music genres I like,” he said. “We weren’t trying to create a whole new genre — just blending traditional and newer age sounds.”
In watching the singer confidently command these eclectic fusions onstage, it became clear that his career would be more than just a viral moment.
Yet despite being immensely grateful for all that’s happened to him in the past year, Martínez still finds himself longing for the simple life he led before.
“I sometimes miss the past — that feeling of having nothing, [but] your art is everything,” he said. “Just having a moment to put together a show with friends and leave it all out on the stage for a crowd of 20 people, where they all acknowledge just your music and know nothing about you.”
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