News: DOS SANTOS ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM, CITY OF MIRRORS,OUT OCTOBER 15TH ON INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM
Today, Chicago-based band Dos Santos announce their new album, City of Mirrors, out October 15th via International Anthem. In conjunction, they present its title track and accompanying video. City of Mirrors is cinematic in its journey, reflecting sounds from across the Americas combined with bandleader Alex Chavez’s compelling poetic narratives. Its 13 tracks consolidate the band’s unique identities, creative and cultural roots, and their penchant for honoring traditional Latinx music with contemporary compositional expressions and production techniques. It achieves the band’s mission to push against their own musical boundaries while also exploring themes of social justice, migration, and contemporary human struggle. Chavez articulates beautifully: “City of Mirrors is an assemblage…glimpses of tradition… reflections on our collective present… luminous echoes between love and solitude, hope and absurdity, euphoria and mourning. This album grapples with and transgresses these binaries because we have/and continue to cross borders. Yet, for us, the border is no metaphor—too much real staring back at us. We embody the border. We (our families) have crossed it. We (our stories) are coated with its residues. And so… we cross the border of self through our art – out of necessity.”
Dos Santos is comprised of Chavez, drummer Daniel Villarreal-Carrillo, percussionist Peter “Maestro” Vale, bassist Jaime Garza, and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Nathan Karagianis. The five began working on City of Mirrors without any expectation of what it would be. They simply hoped to create an honest, unique, and border-defying but broadly communicable sound. To achieve this, they decided to incorporate a sixth member. That led to City of Mirrors being recorded in Los Angeles under the direction of artist, producer, and longtime friend of the band Elliot Bergman (Wild Belle, NOMO). Bergman was able to help shape the music by introducing new ideas for capturing and composing sound; and helping sculpt the songs into their most essential and minimal forms. Alex Chavez explains: “We wanted to step outside of ourselves and that meant working with a producer, something we hadn’t done before in this capacity. We wanted someone to provide us with a different perspective on what we’re doing, what we want to do, and to push us in different ways.”
Today’s “City of Mirrors” single is the second offering that appears on the album, following the previously released “A Shot in the Dark.” “‘City of Mirrors’ is a love song to Puerto Rico amid the aftershocks of disasters,” says Chavez. “Inspired by Gabriel García Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, Puerto Rico to us is like Macondo—the city of mirrors, a central character in that novel—a place of beauty and trauma, of struggle and triumph. Indeed, the Caribbean as a whole is ground zero for this dichotomy, borne of the legacy of colonialism in the ‘new world,’ much as Macondo. This song is a tribute to this place and its enduring story.” The accompanying video was directed by Osvaldo Cuevas, and depicts Chicago-based Afro-Boricua mixed-media artist and activist Amara "Rebel Betty" Martín (who also created original artwork for the City of Mirrors album cover) traveling from Chicago to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane María, as she encounters key figures on the island, including ex-political prisoner Oscar López Rivera
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