Poe Leos was eight years old when her cousin Gaby turned on MTV and introduced her to Alicia Keys and The Pussycat Dolls, according to the release for her new single. Gaby also encouraged her to believe she could become a singer one day. On Friday, October 23, Leos put out the song she wrote for her: “No Estaba Lista (Gaby),” a bilingual folk-pop track released through Sony Music Latin nine days before Día de Muertos.
Poe Leos has spent years working in both of her languages. According to her 2023 SXSW listing, she was born in Mexico and raised in Rockford, Illinois, by a single mother in a Spanish-speaking household where rancheras, salsa, merengue and bachata played. She performed at two Austin showcases that March, and in an interview from the festival, the Media Master Podcast host described her as a writer who moves easily between pop, R&B and hip-hop. Keys and The Pussycat Dolls, the artists Gaby put in front of her, sit on the same pop and R&B side of that map.
Poe Leos turns a funeral tambourine into a production choice
The title translates to “I Wasn’t Ready.” Leos wrote and produced the track herself, according to her team, which describes it as an intimate song about grief, memory and the ways people keep someone present through music. It moves between English and Spanish. That split mirrors the same SXSW bio, which says she grew up on Spanish-language music at home and started listening in English as a teenager, with R&B among her first draws. The song keeps both sides of that upbringing in one track. The dedication is plain: the song is for Gaby. The release does not say when Gaby died or give her full name.
Production is familiar ground for her. In a SoundBetter profile interview, she named songwriting and engineering as her strongest skills. Folk-pop is a change of palette for a writer whose earlier single “La Víctima,” per mitú, blends ranchera and R&B. The production detail that carries the story is smaller. Leos added a tambourine, the same instrument she played at Gaby’s funeral, according to the release. Her team presents the choice as a change in meaning. An instrument that belonged to a goodbye now sits inside a tribute.
Sony Music Latin puts Poe Leos’ Gaby single out ahead of Día de Muertos
Día de Muertos arrives in early November. NPR reports that the Mexican holiday commemorates loved ones who have died, and that families put up altars called ofrendas on Nov. 1 in the belief that their spirits return. Materials around the single point to the overlap. A song and an ofrenda are different things, one a studio recording and the other a family ritual, but both exist to keep a person present.
The label side is a notable step. Her 2023 SXSW profile listed a label as the one thing she was seeking. Three years later, her single is on Sony Music Latin. Sony Music Latin has long carried major names, including Romeo Santos, who signed in 2011, according to Sony Music’s announcement at the time.
The single also shifts the subject of Poe Leos’ year. LaMezcla, which covered her earlier 2026 singles “Las Partes” and “No Fui Yo,” described that run as heartbreak told with maturity rather than bitterness. This song is about a different kind of ending, a family loss, and it was written and produced by Leos herself. The person who first pointed her toward a singing career is now the subject of her newest song.
