The anemic shade under the canopy of Simon L.A.’s Mexican seafood truck was no match for the 95-degree heat radiating from Sunset Boulevard’s black asphalt on the hottest day of the year this past weekend.
Yet, 24-year-old Marcos Crespo, known as Markusiano, the founder and frontman of Depresión Sonora, was unfazed as he turned his head 90 degrees to take the biggest bite of chef Francisco Aguilar’s “Ceviche Taco.”
One of the truck’s best sellers, it's a battered piece of basa fish topped with shrimp ceviche as a garnish. It was loaded generously with Aguilar’s habanero salsa and salsa macha. Nonetheless, the rising post-punk star, wearing all-black and using a cement k-rail as a table, smiled, swooned, and took the double dose of heat like a champ.
An ice-cold Topo Chico in hand, Markusiano's got a sly grin and the weight of a generation’s malaise in his music. He arrived in the U.S. a couple of weeks earlier, shortly before playing Cruel World and marrying the love of his life. Now he's getting ready to do a tour up the California coast.
Markusiano's 2020 self-titled EP sparked a darkwave bedroom revolution, and with his 2024 "Makinavaja" EP still ripping through streams, Markusiano is no longer just a sound—he’s a movement. But today, under the unforgiving L.A. sun, he’s just a guy in love craving a good fish taco and enjoying his moment in the current explosion of Spanish-language music to the top of the charts.
But first, tacos.