One of David Anthony Burke’s first songs was called “Romantic Homicide.”
The teenager was just starting to use a phone app called BandLab to write music for the gaming videos he posted online.
“In the back of my mind, I killed you, and I didn’t even regret it … I hate you,” he sang.
After Burke became D4vd and his fame exploded as a fresh voice for Gen Z, he appeared in a music video elaborating on the murderous theme. Knives spill from a suitcase. A young woman with an apparent chest wound lies on a bed as he hovers over her blindfolded, his white shirt spattered with blood.
Now, D4vd’s fans, along with many who hadn’t previously heard of him, are dissecting his DIY songs about twisted romance for clues, after the badly decomposed body of a 15-year-old girl was found in the trunk of a Tesla he owned.
In the video for another song, “One More Dance,” D4vd drags a person — who also appears to be him — to a car, where a couple stuffs him into the trunk.
Los Angeles police detectives have said that the singer, 20, is cooperating with their investigation. They are seeking to understand any connections between him and the girl, Celeste Rivas Hernandez, with livestreams and videos appearing to show the two together. No one has been charged in connection with Celeste’s death.
D4vd’s rise from a homeschooled Houston teenager posting Fortnite videos online to a burgeoning pop star with a multimillion-dollar recording contract was singular. In an interview with him in September 2024, music producer Benny Blanco marveled at his “insane” method of producing hit songs solely with a smartphone.
Yet D4vd was thoroughly a product of his generation and an age in which a young gamer with a knack for catchy melodies, dark lyrics and YouTube algorithms could almost instantly achieve wealth and celebrity.
“What rendered D4vd particularly captivating to younger audiences was his innate fluency in the cultural lexicon of Gen Z,” said Tiffany Naiman, director of music industry programs and a professor at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music. “Unlike artists cultivated through the conventional machinery of the music industry, D4vd arose organically from the digital ecosystems his listeners themselves inhabit: gaming platforms like Fortnite, online DIY music communities and the ever-evolving realm of social media. This origin imbued his persona with a sense of authenticity and relatability that many younger listeners find increasingly rare and that they deeply crave.”
D4vd has remained silent about Celeste, whose body was found the day after her 15th birthday and had probably died weeks before her body was discovered.
D4vd’s representatives did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and representatives for his music label, the Interscope Records imprint Darkroom, could not be reached.
LAPD Robbery Homicide Capt. Scot Williams said there is no suspect in Celeste’s death because the L.A. County medical examiner is still working to determine her cause of death, which could take months. Police have said they do not know if there is “any criminal culpability beyond the concealment of her body.”

A memorial for Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who was found dead in the trunk of a Tesla.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
In his interview with Blanco for Hero Magazine, D4vd said he had never aspired to be a musician.
After copyright holders demanded that he stop using their songs in his gaming videos, his mother suggested that he write his own material, he told Blanco.
With his sister’s closet serving as a makeshift studio, he found appealing tracks online, uploaded them to the BandLab app and improvised the vocal lines. His signature style — melodious licks with lyrics about romances that sometimes take a dark turn — was immediately evident.
But in keeping with a popular meme, he sped up the music and adopted an Alvin and the Chipmunks persona. Only when he dropped songs at regular speed on TikTok, and the viewership — and income — began surpassing that of his gaming videos did he realize he had a future as a musician.
“Fortnite was going up, the music was like down here, but then they switched,” he told Blanco. “And they were making more money too … that’s how I knew.”
Soon, the record companies came calling. He was still a minor when he landed a deal worth $3 million in September 2022, with the potential to grow to $6 million, according to a contract recorded in court when he was 17. Darkroom, the Interscope imprint, had already found massive success building the career of Billie Eilish, another young artist with a flair for the gothic and ultra-modern production styles.
D4vd’s music “articulates a kind of romantic nihilism emblematic of a generation contending with existential ambiguity, digital saturation and psychological fatigue,” Naiman said. His music is “dramatic in the way adolescent emotion naturally tends to be, yet tempered by a self-aware, internet-age sensibility that weaves together irony, melancholy and vulnerability.”
“Romantic Homicide” has accumulated more than 1.7 billion streams. By June 2023, D4vd was performing at the Valentino fashion show in Milan, Italy. He was a supporting act on SZA’s tour and appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show.
He collaborated frequently with popular YouTubers like Pokimane and JasonTheWeen, also singing with Kali Uchis, Laufey, Hannah Bahng and Hyunjin from the K-Pop group Stray Kids.
As D4vd’s star rose in the music industry, his online persona remained that of a Fortnite streamer with a fan base of other teenage gamers.
“itami has to kill me in the most gruesome way possible,” he wrote on Discord in February 2023, referring to his alter ego, the blindfolded D4vd in the bloody white shirt who appears in the scenes of murder and kidnapping in his music videos.
Celeste’s body was discovered in a Tesla at a Hollywood tow yard on Sept. 8.
(KTLA)
“i’m moving to la in april guys who lives here,” he wrote in February 2023.
“who wanna go on a date,” he asked on May 6, 2023.
Other times, he joked about his love of anime, music and gore.
By July 11, 2024, even after touring with SZA, he was still returning to Discord to invite his fans to a Fortnite tournament.
A little more than a year later, when he debuted Fortnite’s first official anthem, “Locked & Loaded,” on Sept. 4, he was riding high, in the midst of a sold-out world tour for his debut album, Withered, which hit No. 13 on the Billboard 200 album chart. He had performed to raucous crowds at Coachella in April and was booked to play his most high-profile L.A. date yet at the Greek Theatre later that month.
The next day, his Tesla was towed from Bluebird Avenue in the Hollywood Hills, near a mansion he was renting for $20,000 a month. Neighbors had been complaining to the city about the abandoned car for weeks.
Three days later, a tow yard worker noticed a foul odor and alerted the LAPD. Armed with a warrant, a detective popped the front trunk.
A Shhh tattoo was visible on one of Celeste’s fingers, according to the medical examiner, mirroring one on D4vd’s finger. The teenager had repeatedly run away from her Lake Elsinore home and had been missing since Valentine’s Day.
On Sept. 17, the LAPD served a search warrant on the Hollywood mansion, seizing computers and electronics and performing forensic tests, according to law enforcement sources not authorized to discuss the probe.
D4vd soon moved out of the mansion, and his unexpected stardom quickly crumbled. Crocs and Hollister pulled him out of an ad campaign for their “Dream Drop” collaboration. Tour dates were canceled, first in San Francisco, then in L.A., then elsewhere.
Kali Uchis, who collaborated with him on the song “Crashing,” announced she was taking steps to have the track removed from streaming services, “given today’s disturbing news.”
An Olympic figure skater, Alysa Liu, scrapped a routine set to “This Is How It Feels” by D4vd and Laufey, saying she was “pursuing a different direction that aligns with my values & just my overall ethos.”
The singer’s music has recently earned a notable, if morbid, boost on streaming services. “Romantic Homicide” reentered the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at No. 33 on the singles chart.
D4vd’s manager, Josh Marshall, a music executive whose Mogul Vision partnered with Interscope, distanced himself from the former rising star.
“i have zero knowledge of anything and I don’t live in California,” he wrote on TikTok, using the handle JMogul. “… my job doesn’t require me to have much interaction with any of my clients/David, as there are many others that work with him on a day-to-day capacity, not me. This is so tragic for so many and for her family.”
Times staff writer Salvador Hernandez contributed to this report.