Dos Santos Extend a Personal Line on ‘Es Amor’

Dos Santos have always treated music as lineage rather than style. The Chicago band, whose members have roots in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Panama, moved from a cumbia foundation into art rock, jazz, and experimental Latin folk across their catalog and recent solo work. On their fourth album, Es Amor, that continuity turns personal.

The title track began when frontman Alex Chávez wrote a melody he couldn’t place. Weeks later, while combing through archives in Texas, he found the same melody in a song his father had recorded decades earlier. The discovery reshaped the song, giving it a deeper anchor. On the record, “Es Amor” is a lush but rhythmic ballad, alternating sparse passages with layered guitar and organ melodies.

Es Amor is more concise than 2021’s City of Mirrors, but still gathers far-reaching threads. “Money Gun” sets cumbia rhythms against surfy, psychedelic guitar. “El Lobo” uses a lupine metaphor to tell a migrant story with cinematic weight. Elsewhere, Afro-Cuban jazz and noir psychedelia share space in “Bajos Recursos,” while “Angeles” leans cumbia into quiet storm soul.

The album’s many interconnected sounds bridge the personal and the communal. Dos Santos aren’t just revisiting the past; they’re showing how a single melody can carry across generations and genres without losing its center.