This sparrow occurs in the forest understory of the Amazon Basin. White head stripes and the male's black breast band are useful field marks.
The upperparts are yellow-olive, with yellow at the bend of the wing. The black head has white stripes; males have an incomplete black breast band, while the female's underparts are grayish.
It is recorded in the understory of interior forest. Peru Aves describes few records from Madre de Dios and Ucayali in eastern Peru, from foothills up to about 1,000 m.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.