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The profile · researched 29 September 2026
ELYELLA: the Rioja DJ duo that turned Spanish indie into dance music
María Eguizábal and the anonymous MØNØ have spent fifteen years rebuilding Spanish guitar bands as club records. Their second album, Lo más importante, arrived in October 2025 and has carried them through a 2026 of festivals and a nearly sold-out autumn run.
A cultural manager who started DJing at night
María Eguizábal Elías was born in Arnedo, in La Rioja, in 1978. She read economics at the Universidad Pública de Navarra, studied in Paris, Exeter and Rabat, then took a master's in cultural management in Madrid and worked at the Centro 2 de Mayo. Music came in from the side: Radio 3 at home as a child, then a friend who kept passing her cassettes and demos by rock and indie bands. She spent close to a decade in arts administration before putting her own project in front of an audience.
ELYELLA began in 2010 as a DJ pairing between Eguizábal, billed as ELLA, and a partner who performs as MØNØ. The sessions came first and the productions followed, as the records they wanted to play stopped existing and had to be made. The split in the duo has stayed unusual: MØNØ does not appear publicly and does not give his name, while Eguizábal fronts the project and runs its label. Speaking to eldiario.es in December 2025, she put the anonymity down to a preference for attention on the work rather than the private life around it.
Her own account of how the two halves of her week fit together, given to El Día de La Rioja in July 2024, was blunt enough: the day goes to the artists she manages, the night to ELYELLA.
Vanana Records and the gold singles
The single Magic came in 2017, the same year Eguizábal co-founded Vanana Records with Amatria and Pau Paredes. The label is both a home for ELYELLA's own releases and a working business that has relaunched bands including Ginebras and Karavana, which is why so many Spanish festival bills carry two or three Vanana acts at once — Songkick counts twenty-six shared appearances with Ginebras and nineteen with Karavana.
The 2018 EP Lovers produced the record that made the duo's name. Todo lo que importa, a collaboration with the Murcian band Viva Suecia, spread across social platforms and went gold. The formula was set there: take an act whose audience sings along to guitars, and rebuild the song so it works at four in the morning. The first album, Dreamers, followed in 2019 with Zahara, Jero Romero and Alberto Jiménez of Miss Caffeina.
Que nada nos pare (lo más importante), made with La La Love You in 2022, went further, earning gold and then the duo's first platinum certification; Mondosonoro's reviewer later described it as one of the essential pop hymns of the past four festival seasons. Bailando mal with Ginebras followed in 2023. In 2024 the duo were handed two gold discs at Sala Sol in Madrid, for Que nada nos pare and Todo lo que importa, by then past ten million combined streams.
Lo más importante
The second album, Lo más importante, was released on Vanana Records on 24 October 2025: ten tracks, thirty-three minutes, and a guest list that reads as a census of the current Spanish alternative scene — Love of Lesbian, Iván Ferreiro, Lori Meyers, La La Love You, Siloé, Merino, Besmaya, Suu, Kaia Lana and Elem.
Mondosonoro gave it seven out of ten, with Martín P. Corral reading it as an exercise in resilience in which the duo deliberately abandon the melancholy that dominates the scene around them in favour of progressive melodies, bright drops and dance synthesisers. House-leaning tracks such as Nadie lo podrá cambiar and Me falta tu voz sit alongside material that opens out into whistling, choral parts and strings, which the review took as evidence of a widening palette rather than a change of direction.
Eguizábal framed the record in similar terms to eldiario.es: music leans heavily on pain, and there is room for building shelters of optimism instead. In the same conversation she was less emollient about the industry around her, arguing that it cannot absorb everyone emerging from Operación Triunfo, that building a career from nothing is getting harder, and that Spanish awards still underrate electronic music in a way France does not. She also addressed the KKR investment row affecting festivals that book her artists.
Where they stand in autumn 2026
The project turned fifteen in 2025, and the touring pattern has stayed deliberately thin — roughly two shows a month, by Eguizábal's own count in 2024, each built as a large production rather than a club date. Songkick lists around sixteen ELYELLA concerts across 2026 and just under 14,900 users tracking them.
The album campaign has run through most of this year. The duo played Granada Sound in Granada on 12 September 2026. Four dates remain on general sale as of late September: Oasis Elche Music Fest in Elche on 9 October, Festival ContemPOPranea in Don Benito, Extremadura, on 17 October, Palau Alameda in Valencia on 24 October, and Razzmatazz 1 in Barcelona on 14 November, where doors are at 7.30pm, advance tickets are €27.50 with fees and the age limit is sixteen.
La Riviera in Madrid on 21 November 2026 is sold out. A further La Riviera date is already booked for 13 February 2027, which would extend a residency the duo have now held at the venue for several consecutive years. Beyond Spain they have played Scala in London, and the festival record runs through FIB Benicàssim, Bilbao BBK Live, Sonorama Ribera, Mad Cool and Low Festival.
The show they have built
The clearest recent account of an ELYELLA night is Wololo Sound's review of La Riviera on 8 November 2025, the launch show for Lo más importante and the fifth consecutive year the duo had played the room. Both that date and an 18 October show at the same venue sold out.
The set ran close to two hours and treated the duo's own catalogue as one strand among several: Podemos vencer and Tenemos la respuesta from the new album carried the middle of the night, while older remixes and collaborations were cut with current records by The Chemical Brothers, Fred again.. and Chappell Roan. Merino, Besmaya and Ginebras came on to sing their parts. At one point the pair left the stage altogether and set up among the audience, Boiler Room style.
The Valencian DJ duo Wisemen Project opened and the review called the warm-up impeccable. The reviewer's summary of the crowd was that it did not stop singing for a second, and the night closed on the Viva Suecia collaboration that started the whole thing.
The show, now
An ELYELLA headline show now runs close to two hours and is built as a continuous DJ set rather than a run of songs. At La Riviera in Madrid on 8 November 2025, the launch night for Lo más importante and the duo's fifth consecutive year in the venue, new tracks Podemos vencer and Tenemos la respuesta anchored the middle of the set while older remixes and collaborations were mixed against current records by The Chemical Brothers, Fred again.. and Chappell Roan. Guest vocalists come on to sing their own parts — Merino, Besmaya and Ginebras did that night — and at one point the pair abandoned the stage to play from within the crowd, Boiler Room style. The Valencian duo Wisemen Project opened, and Wololo Sound's review called the warm-up impeccable and reported an audience that did not stop singing throughout, with the night ending on the Viva Suecia collaboration Todo lo que importa. Both that date and the 18 October 2025 Madrid show sold out. The 2026 run keeps the same shape at similar scale: Palau Alameda in Valencia on 24 October, Razzmatazz 1 in Barcelona on 14 November with doors at 7.30pm and advance tickets at €27.50, and a sold-out La Riviera on 21 November, with festival sets at Oasis Elche on 9 October and ContemPOPranea on 17 October.
Researched from mondosonoro.com · wololosound.com · eldiario.es · eldiadelarioja.es · elyellamusic.com · salarazzmatazz.com · songkick.com · crazyminds.es