Dos Santos to Release New Album 'Es Amor' and Head Out on National Tour
ES AMOR arrives via Otherly Love, marking the Chicago band's latest exploration of Latin American rhythms.
Chicago-based alternative-Latin quintet Dos Santos has shared 'Es Amor,' the title track from their forthcoming fourth album of the same name, due out August 28 via Otherly Love. The track arrives alongside a video directed by Osvaldo Cuevas and starring Olivia Dankowski, filmed as a tribute to Chicago and its neighborhoods. The album marks the band's first release in five years, with bandleader Alex E. Chávez noting that the song's melody came to him late one night while writing, later discovering it echoed a recording made by his father decades earlier. A national tour is also scheduled in support of the release.
The song's melody came to bandleader Alex E. Chávez late one night while writing. It felt strangely familiar, though he couldn't quite place why. 'It stuck with me, this melody. Though I didn't then know why,' Chávez said. Singing it in near darkness while plucking his nylon-string guitar, he felt he had encountered something bigger than himself.
Weeks later, while searching through an archive in the sweltering Texas heat, a record called 'El Amor' spun on the turntable—one made by Chávez's father decades earlier. 'And there it was,' Chávez said. 'That very same melody, the one that came knocking at my door. It was the voice of my father in his twenties.'
That discovery reverberates throughout ES AMOR. Equal parts dream and memory, spirit echo and migration story, the melody forms part of the album's sonic texture, a thread connecting generations. Its journey ultimately crystallizes the album's central message: that love, in all its shades and surprise appearances, remains the most enduring response to a world marred by hate.
Produced by Grammy Award–winning Beto Martinez and brought to life by Jaime Garza, Nathan Karagianis, Peter 'Maestro' Vale, Daniel Villarreal, and Alex E. Chávez, ES AMOR is a groove haven, a thrumming balm for trying days. Tight, intricate arrangements and production move together to evoke a definitively Américan conversation. Across its ten tracks, son jarocho and cumbia rub elbows with psychedelic rock, contemporary jazz, and Afro-Cuban percussion. At every turn, Dos Santos's sounds and sentiments align, creating peaks and valleys that beg to be responded to with hips, feet, hands, hearts.
'Making this album together, each of us bringing our own stories and experiences, I couldn't help but think of my father, of his melody, of everyone like him, then and now,' Chávez said. 'Of people, immigrants, writing and singing love songs in the most brutal of circumstances, amidst power working to deny them their very humanity.' In this moment, Dos Santos remind us all of our linked stories and places and movements, and, in the face of overwhelming odds, of the urgency of renewed connection, and of what that feeling can sound like.
On the heels of the album's release, Dos Santos will embark on a national tour, including festival appearances at Orton Park Festival, Sound and Gravity, Hopscotch, Earshot Jazz Festival, and The Infidels Jazz Festival. The run will see the band travel across the West Coast, through Texas, and the East Coast, culminating at Brooklyn's Public Records in December. Additional dates are to be announced.
Tour Dates
August 29 @ Orton Park Festival – Madison, WI
September 3 @ Sound and Gravity Festival – Chicago, IL
September 10 @ Hopscotch - Raleigh, NC
October 13 @ Zebulon – Los Angeles, CA
October 14 @ Yoshi's – Oakland, CA
October 15 @ Kuumbwa – Santa Cruz, CA
October 16 @ Polaris Hall – Portland, OR
October 17 @ Earshot Jazz Festival – Seattle, WA
October 18 @ The Infidels Jazz Festival – Vancouver, BC
October 22 @ Deep Ellum Art Co. – Dallas, TX
October 23 @ Wonky Power – Houston, TX
October 24 @ Continentual Club – Austin, TX
December 17 @ Tech 25 – Pittsburgh, PA
December 18 @ Jammin' Java – Vienna, VA
December 19 @ Public Records – Brooklyn, NY
Tickets and tour information are available at dossantoschi.com.
ES AMOR – Tracklist
Dos Santos
ES AMOR
August 28 [Otherly Love]
01 'Money Gun'
02 'El Lobo'
03 'Es Amor'
04 'Medianoche'
05 'I Think 83'
06 'Aldama'
07 'Cielos'
08 'Bajos Recursos'
09 'Sol'
10 'Angeles'
Photo Credit: Dos Santos, photo by Trey Legit
Photo Credit: Dos Santos, photo by Trey Legit
