Localized: Yuzo Nieto

Denver singer-songwriter Yuzo Nieto is a brown man in a white, white world. Sure, race shouldn’t matter—but honestly, not acknowledging color is almost as bad as being judgmental about it. Nieto’s self-released full-length Building Up While Falling Down is a kaleidoscopic rainbow, and that's a good thing. A variety of cultural influences are all over it: The album travels from Latin jazz to Seattle electro-pop to San Francisco folk to a secret song that is pure Miami bass (done up acoustic-style, as befits Nieto's main mode of music-making). It's an urban lounge record for people who can't sit still. The disc also seems to draw inspiration from some hometown heroes: Building Up has all the lyrical cleverness of Chris Adolf (of Bad Weather California), the broken-hearted sincerity of Ian Cooke, and the guitar fingers of Nathaniel Rateliff (of Born in the Flood and The Wheel). But there’s nothing derivative about Nieto and his worldly muses. His Spanish-tinged croon is uniquely his own, as is his far-reaching musical style. The boy may be brown, but he writes songs in Technicolor. And his dedication to the craft is concisely summed up on the track “Pama.” On it he wails, “I would give my life to sing to you.” And by “you,” he means everyone everywhere in this wide, wide world.