Coming up amid a moody wave of young Mexican and Mexican American artists loosely grouped under the so-called “sad sierreño” banner, teenage standout Ivan Cornejo made his mark on 2021 with “Está Dañada”. With its spare instrumentation and earnest vocals, that wistfully sombre single resonated with listeners enough to send it hurtling towards the heights of the relevant charts in the US and elsewhere. A sobering contrast to the raucous defiance of the concurrent trapcorridos movement’s stars, the corresponding albeit concise album Alma Vacía operates in a similarly dolorous mode, evidenced by the romantic devastations of “Llamadas Perdidas” and the bitter rebukes of “Estás en Mí Pasado”.