The Sooty-capped Bush-Tanager, Chlorospingus pileatus, is a small passerine bird. This tanager is an endemic resident breeder in the highlands of Costa Rica and western Panama.

The Sooty-capped Bush-Tanager is found in mossy mountain forests, second growth and adjacent bushy clearings, typically from 1600 m altitude to above the timberline. The bulky cup nest is built on bank, in a dense bush, or hidden amongst epiphytes up to 11 m high in a tree. The normal clutch is two pink-brown marked white eggs.

The adult Sooty-capped Bush-Tanager is 13.5 cm long and weighs 20g. The adult has a blackish head with a white supercilium and a grey throat. It has olive upperparts and yellow underparts, becoming white on the belly. Some individuals in the Irazu-Turrialba area are greyer and lack yellow in the underparts. Immatures are browner-headed, duller below, and have a duller olive-tinged supercilium. This species is easily distinguished from Common Bush-Tanager by its blacker head and obvious supercilium.

Sooty-capped Bush-Tanagers occur in small groups, or as part of a mixed-species feeding flock. This species feeds on insects, spiders and small fruits.

The Sooty-capped Bush-Tanager's call is a high tseet tseet, and the song is a scratchy seechur seechur see see seechur seechur with variations.