Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd, and it's obviously time to talk about d4vd.

David Anthony Burke, or David stylized as d4vd, is a young singer, producer, and songwriter who has been on the come-up for several years now. And in fact, he just dropped his debut full-length LP back in April, and he was actually just on tour behind that album.

But now that tour is seemingly over because about a week ago now, we saw the first thread pop up of what has been one of the most insane music industry stories unraveling ever. Because again, while this man was moving from tour date to tour date to tour date, a dead body was discovered in an impounded Tesla registered in his name.

Even though this is obviously very shocking information, initially, d4vd wasn't getting a whole lot of blame or allegations thrown his way. In fact, his tour was just continuing. After all, this car had been impounded and obviously was out of d4vd's possession. Presumably, this was all just some insane coincidence; d4vd as a successful music industry recording artist, would have been just too busy and engrossed in his own career to actually have anything to do with, right? There's no possible way this could be some insane murder, cover-up, and David would have some personal connection to this situation or person.

But then upon the discovery of this body, we began to get more information that raised some very huge red flags and concerns, like the body that was discovered in this Tesla was that of a teen girl. Authorities described the remains as having been dismembered or mutilated in some fashion. There are also allegations of a matching finger tattoo of some sort. And apparently, the body has been identified as one Celeste Rivas Hernandez, someone who there has been a missing persons report out on since April of last year.

There are a lot of headlines saying how, "Oh, this is a 15-year-old girl who was missing," but there's some confusion around the age discussion on this topic because it's important to remember that Celeste was 13 in 2024 when she had gone missing. And yes, while there are headlines and articles talking about how she was 15, given the state of decomposition her body was in upon discovery, she most likely died when she was 14.

Now, it's off of these small bits of information and Celeste's ID that the Internet began to start doing some sleathing around d4vd and very quickly found that d4vd and Celeste actually had quite a history together, a lot of which has been pieced together through a series of old TikToks and Discord messages, Instagram posts, and Stories. But maybe the most damning piece of evidence to have resurface in the midst of all of this controversy is an old Twitch clip that we will play to you now where David appears alongside a girl that seems to be Celeste.

Old clip resurfaces of D4vd’s own livestream viewers calling him a p*do and joking about underaged Celeste, crazy how no one brought this up till now 🤢🤮
pic.twitter.com/yEqL5RJTUy

— MMM (@M______M______S) September 20, 2025

I mean, not only does this person look just like the girl in these missing person photos, the chat on this stream seems to be aware of not only their dynamic cracking some Epstein jokes as well, but just before the clip ends, someone in chat seems to be clearly aware that this person's name is Celeste. I mean, even without factoring in that we're possibly watching d4vd here interacting with a girl who is now dead on camera in this clip.

This situation is so strange because what is somebody who is of d4vd's position, a successful adult, legal adult music industry recording artist, doing streaming late night with a girl who is clearly not even a high school graduate, who must be in his care to some degree, having to end a stream with her, abrupty saying this footage needs to be deleted after she makes an edgy joke and saying, I media trained you.

It boggles the mind, and it just makes you wonder, where are the adults? Where are the trustworthy authority figures? I mean, it's very telling that we're in a time where TMZ is posting clips of somebody who is allegedly this girl's former teacher talking to his students about how this girl he used to teach her, and she met this rapper over social media.

@tmz Celeste Rivas' former teacher tells students she met #D4vd ♬ original sound - TMZ

"That's her in my classroom in front of this poster right here. When I taught her, she met this dude on social media. He was a rapper in LA. He came and got her. She ran away from home. She was gone for a month. The cops found her in Hollywood brought her back to our school. She came back to our school, told people this story. She disappeared again in May of that year. And then I found out yesterday that she's now dead in that rapper's car, cut into pieces. You want to know how they met? I feel like I just said it. Social media."

I mean, obviously, he's trying to scare them straight about, apparently, who may be able to reach them or persuade them of whatever over Instagram or whatever channel they're being contacted through by somebody who might be in d4vd's position, someone older, someone with money, someone with influence. But I mean, just think of how many people had to drop the fucking ball in order for it to get to this point.

But yeah, it's very strange and it's very concerning because it does seem like looking at a lot of different posts and stuff that has come up in retrospect, that this was, at least on some level, a bit of an open secret among the most devoted segments of d4vd's fan base. And yet this was not being called out effectively to a point where something was actually being done about it.

And again, I stress, d4vd was not some crazy, obscure, completely underground figure that nobody had ever heard of. This guy had a very large and respectable social media following, had done some pretty big interviews with traditional media and new media and podcast media. I mean, I admit, as somebody who regularly covers music, I myself was not aware of this either. But also, I've never formally reviewed d4vd's stuff and never dug into him because personally, I just don't find his music that interesting.

However, there were clearly a lot of people out there who did. And the fact that this was just going over the heads of so many or just not registering to a lot of people as a of something bad is just strange, especially given that in the wake of Celeste being identified, fans have not been having a hard time finding a bunch of different context clues, be it in some of d4vd's biggest songs like "Romantic Homicide", a track that when you look on YouTube, was apparently released on Celeste's birthday.

There's also been a leaked Celeste song with some pretty disturbing lyrics laced into it as well. And these things are concerning enough and honestly, are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the various connections people have been making. But as of right now, as of me shooting this video currently at this moment, d4vd seemingly has not been arrested. The biggest repercussions that he's seen as a result of all of this is that his tour is just done. Authorities have affirmed that there is an investigation going on right now in all of this. But what direction that's going in at the moment is unclear.

And on top of all of this, another majorly concerning element to this story is the way that the internet has been handling it. I mean, sure, while fans and concerned citizens have dug up a lot of super valid and important information related to this case. Also, a lot of the discourse happening around this issue right now is being painted by clout chasers, by people throwing out insane conspiracy theories, people defending d4vd or totally making up false information, and everyone collectively joining into the narrative in this story is like pretending they're a true crime podcast host, digging for a string of clues that seemingly left by maybe the biggest brain dead moron on the planet. A guy who, when you read into his behaviors and the way that he wrote his lyrics and presented himself, seems like he fancied himself as this quirky but tortured a self-obsessed anime villain.

"I'm really big into anime, and I'm really big into manga, and I wanted to make my own manga series at one point. And a big part of that manga was an evil version of me named Itami, which means pain in Japanese. The story of the manga went like I was a detective, and there was an evil version of myself that would come out at random moments, like fight club with Tyler Durden. He would commit the crimes that I would have to solve as a detective. When I was as a detective, I'd be solving murders that I'm committing myself." - d4vd

But clearly, this situation right now is ongoing, and as much as the internet has dug up around this topic and d4vd and Celeste's alleged history, we're still standing officially at a point where we have more questions than answers. But still, on the surface, from everything that has been gathered thus far, the tea leaves are sending a very disturbing message.

While I'm sure there are many out there who are very desensitized to the insanity that this story is displaying on some level, I myself continue to be shocked by stories that we're seeing come out of the music industry over and over of people abusing their positions of power in order to abuse and take advantage of others. If this pans out to be another one of those, it's going to go down in history as handily one of the worst.

But that is going to be it. Those are my thoughts for now. Let me know yours in the comments.

Anthony Fantano, I'm disturbed, forever.