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St. Panther delivers East Side Love Story, an effervescent, soulful set of love songs dedicated to the place they call home. The recording project of Mexican/Colombian artist, producer, singer, rapper, and multi-instrumentalist Dani Bojorges-Giraldo (they/them) has developed over the past six years within the walls of their East Los Angeles apartment. Friends, lovers, sounds, and songs, the essence of the East Side pours through the windows as an endless stream of distinctly Latino taste. Chicano soul, Motown classics, G-funk anthems, and other feel-good oldies fill the air with warmth and romance. Everything imbues East Side Love Story, St. Panther’s full-length debut filled with timeless melodies and swaggering charm, arriving in 2026 on the art-forward label drink sum wtr. 

Coloring their craft with the surrounding culture, East Side Love Story captures a chapter in Bojorges-Giraldo’s life defined by freedom and love. Reuniting with co-producer Chris McClenney (H.E.R., Khalid, Jamila Woods), they see the record as a culmination: “I've been able to apply my influences and build a world around what my signature is, pulling the best of my performances and musicality, figuring out the place that I want it all to sit.”

Work began subconsciously when they started Shazamming songs that neighbors were playing each day, populating a playlist they playfully titled East Side Love Story, a nod to their cat’s bustling social life. “She's a stray, literally got her from my neighborhood outside. She has a roster of boyfriends who come to visit her at the door and window. Pretty soon, my life started mirroring hers,” explains Bojorges-Giraldo. East Side Love Story traces seasons of relationships, from the ecstasy of newness to the pitfalls of monogamy, the distance between one another on respective paths, and an evolving understanding of love in its totality.

Bojorges-Giraldo’s been honing this sound across two EPs, 2020’s These Days and 2025’s Strange World, with an “innate ability to translate their inner world into deeply relatable R&B gems,” writes Bandcamp. Their songs can move between R&B, soul, jazz, hip-hop, or alt-pop; a patchwork threaded by an ear for inventive, inviting production and an unmistakable voice. Whether raspy or silky, crooning or rapping, that drawl contains pure charisma, joy, and grit. Their ability to tap into life’s vibrance as much as its pain places them within a rarified throughline of expressive pop greats from Wonder to Winehouse. They’ve always been drawn to the enduring qualities of pop past. “I think about something being played on a record player, what kind of experience it’s going to be listening-wise,” they continue. “Musically, I wanted to create a space that is even more so, diving into my influences, but also trying to modernize them and have a current perspective on them.”

The title track opens the album on a drum break from C.C. Hamilton, with Bojorges-Giraldo shaping the groove on guitar, capturing the magnetism of a new crush, a person they started to imagine as a powerful caricature. “Someone on the block that everybody is just like, who is that?”

“SOMEHOW” follows with the more melancholic flipside, an ode to loneliness and that feeling of meeting someone again after too much time has passed. “We all need love somehow,” they sing over wobbling bass, hi-hats, and honey-hued harmonies evoking the Motown era. The backups return for “THANK YOU LIFE!”, featuring Houston’s reggie, whose easy-going flow speaks to insecurities and jealousies, then Bojorges-Giraldo takes the mic in a jubilant swing. Unpacking the track, they add, “We create so many parameters and limits and rules in relationships. This song is a celebration of having the opportunity to love someone again, but from a different perspective, to love them wholeheartedly, in their allness, with more freedom to breathe and exist.”

Throughout East Side Love Story, Bojorges-Giraldo paints companionship as a fluid target, something that can feel just right until it doesn’t, a dynamic both eternal and of its time (“my generation does have a bit of a commitment phobia”). With resplendent keys and fills, “OUT ON THE CORNER” channels the romantic spirit of Billy Stewart’s lowrider classic “Sitting in the Park Waiting for You”, detailing the games we play, the “one-foot-in one-foot-out approach to love.” Elsewhere, they’re making peace with single life; “WHEN I THINK ABOUT IT” is a self-love soul bop with a tinge of retrospection. They bounce along the beat, “I don’t think I’m designed to stay in one place for too long, it’s not easy,” before admitting on the hook, “I still think about you, sometimes.”

“LUCKY” ends East Side Love Story in gratitude. “I feel fortunate to have been able to experience this plethora of experiences with these different people,” says Bojorges-Giraldo. “Maybe the blessing is that we were a lesson to each other as well.” Above light strums and shuffling percussion, deeply in their Stevie bag, they posit low-key lines about the passage of time, “Can we just stay right here?” It’s a lost cause, but for a moment, in the moonlit scene, the power of St. Panther’s artistry makes it feel possible.