Subtitles that read backward as an evident reference to the title of the song, paired with the classic and refined aesthetic of old cinema and a melody as soft as a feather, are part of the universe the duo Maiah & Gabriel built to present their new single, “Palíndromo.”
This Venezuelan duo, born from a date that turned them into a romantic and creative couple with more than 20 years of history, is not just music, nor love, nor cinema, nor stories, nor poetry, but all of it together, blended into a cocktail released drop by drop through songs, videos, short films, and even documentaries.
“Our romance manifests through creation, but nothing compares to what we’re doing now. Maybe we’ve never created so shamelessly for each other. In that sense, it’s like being naked while thousands of people read the love letters we write to each other as songs. If we die tomorrow, those songs will still be there,” the duo says.
What we now know as Maiah & Gabriel was forged out of curiosity. Maiah Ocando, a filmmaker, visual artist, and singer who had just released her first solo album. Gabriel Torrelles, a writer, musician, and creative director who understands the language of storytelling from the gut. They met in 2005, one month after that debut, and from that moment on, creation stopped being an individual practice and became a bridge between them.
Over two decades, they’ve crossed media boundaries with no team but with talent. They built their own studio in a small 30-square-meter apartment, brought to life one of the first Spanish-language channels to catch Hollywood’s attention, created series, audiovisual projects, fashion campaigns, and even a literary saga that became a bestseller. Their work, scattered and expansive, has always been in dialogue with reinvention.
That radical independence, which they now defend as a manifesto under the motto Forever Indie, gave them the freedom to turn mistakes into an aesthetic, nostalgia into resistance, and risk into their own compass. They have no record label. No team. They don’t follow trends, yet it hasn’t been necessary for them to connect through feelings like love, loss, identity, and time.
Their debut single, “Blanco & Negro,” was the gateway. A vibrant mix of electronic maximalism, Italo disco, and chanson française, intertwined with the drama of 1980s Spanish pop.
Their current project, which encompasses their debut and their new single, is their most ambitious yet. A conceptual album told song by song, accompanied by music videos that function as scenes from a surreal film and short documentaries that reveal the creative process behind each release. Everything is written, produced, directed, and edited by the two of them, armed with nothing but their vision and a Patreon community that follows every creative decision step by step.
“Palíndromo” is loaded with deep personal emotion. Gabriel wrote it after the death of one of his best friends; the second passed away months later, right before filming the video—an event that takes symbolic form in the video's aesthetic, with its red filters and Maiah with wings singing directly into the camera in a fixed chiaroscuro shot, with eyes full of pain and an expression as sad as it is beautiful.
With “Palíndromo,” the duo expands their conceptual album to reaffirm their place on the map of artists who are constructing, in their own way and “by hand,” a language that believes in the organic, the imperfect, and the realistic as a way to bare the soul and pierce through hearts.
.png)
.jpg)
