On March 20, 2026, Figure & Ground releases Runoff, the second album from Otracami. Across the album's 11 tracks, Otracami layers intricate vocals, field recordings, and samples into full-band arrangements that feel overfull with life, mirroring the album's central tension between containment and overflow. "I was trying out leaving for the first time—people and jobs and situations with family," reflects Ortiz. "It was real trial and error—sometimes that really worked and felt liberating and other times I had to turn around and go back. It was a period of big experimentation."

This time of personal exploration coincided with Ortiz deepening her practice in music production and sound design, including contributing to the LA Philharmonic exhibit EVERY VOICE, composing the score for the play KLII, and collaborating with Claire Dickson in Myrtle—a project NPR Music praised for music that “casts a spell — and promptly breaks it…at once lovely and strange, a lullaby that lingers in discomfort.” Drawing from this work, Runoff dovetails her songwriting with full-band arrangements and exploratory production, weaving intricate vocal layers, field recordings, and samples throughout.

Album trailer:

Based in Brooklyn, Otracami draws from both the landscapes of her life in New York and her childhood in Northern California, which was the setting for her debut album’s uneasy coming-of-age narratives. “The stuff I used to make felt like it was much smoother and that kind of feels like California, there’s this open, flat, uncanny smoothness to everything. New York feels murkier, there’s more friction out in the open, just in the way that people relate to each other. I think that made the music more angular and expressive.”

In New York, Otracami also connected with the collaborators that helped shape Runoff’s sonic world: the album features guitarist and engineer Andres Abenante (Birthing Hips, Jaybird Studio), drummer Jon Starks (My Trio, jondownload), bassist Jesse Bielenberg (Dora Jar, altopalo) and was mixed and mastered by Lee Meadvin (Kalia Vandever, Claire Dickson). “I wanted it to feel more loose, more lush, more live and alive. I feel like this record is more about the band and the arrangements that we made together—we had been playing together for a few years but bringing them this music felt like a turning point because it was more collaborative.”

Runoff reflects the profoundly human songs Otracami has honed as an emerging voice in Brooklyn's songwriter-composer community—vivid music that holds its shape even as emotion spills over.

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Credits:

Written and produced by Camila Ortiz

Mixed and mastered by Lee Meadvin

Recorded by Andres Abenante at Jaybird Studio in Brooklyn, NY

Camila Ortiz, vocals, guitar, synths

Andres Abenante, guitar on all but track 11, bass on tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, 6

Jon Starks, drums, keys on tracks 2, 4, 7, 8, 9

Jesse Bielenberg, bass on tracks 3, 9, 10, additional guitar on track 10

Album Art by Bella Week and Sai Tripathi