This yellow, blue and black tanager is found in forest, woodland and shrub in the Andean highlands of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.

The hooded mountain tanager was formally described in 1837 by the French naturalists Alcide d'Orbigny and Frédéric de Lafresnaye from a specimen collected in the Bolivian Yungas.

[2][3] It is now the only species placed in the genus Buthraupis that was introduced in 1851 by the German ornithologist Jean Cabanis.

[4][5] The genus name combines the Ancient Greek bou- meaning "huge" and thraupis an unknown small bird but used by ornithologists to signify a tanager.

The specific name is from the Latin montanus meaning "of the mountains".