For Filipino-American artist Labit, SOL is a reflection on where he’s been and the people who helped him get there. Named after his grandmother Solita, or Grandma Sol, the album carries her warmth and calm throughout, a guiding light across 18 songs that drift between reflection, nostalgia, and self-discovery.

SOL feels like growing pains set to melody: sometimes tender, sometimes heavy, always honest. Labit’s songwriting sits right in that sweet spot between detail and emotion, where the small moments hit hardest — a messy kitchen, a long drive, a quiet night trying to figure life out. You can feel that intimacy in tracks like All My Plants Are Dying, where adulthood feels like a comedy of errors, and Better, a moment of calm amid the chaos.

The singles already hinted at the album’s emotional range. Mangoes and Rice looks back on his Filipino-American upbringing with affection and clarity, Cleaning Out the Fridge featuring Emily Rowed finds beauty in airing things out, and Parallel captures the soft shock of realising love has been right beside you all along.

In the end, SOL feels like a conversation with yourself, messy, warm, and a little bit healing. Below, Labit breaks down each track and the moments that shaped them.

STAY AWHILE

I wrote this song after feeling overwhelmed by life in general. All I wanted to do was be at home with my person and my dog and our lovely little life, but sometimes that’s not possible. It’s about feeling like you don’t have as much time with whoever and wanting to stay awhile. When things aren’t quite right but you don’t have a second to fix it. You just have to keep going. 

BREAK! 

Break is about the person who isn’t good for you but for some reason, you can’t not have them in your life. You keep on going back to them and they keep going back to you. It’s a roller coaster of emotions every time you’re with them. You’re killing it without them, but just like a drug, you relapse every time they hit you up. 

PRETTY

This one has my favorite guitar riff/beat of the whole record. It’s about the smaller, rougher parts of a relationship and figuring out each other. When it’s not so storybook anymore but you’re loving through it all. Through the simpler moments in life. 

CLOUD

I remember having a conversation with a friend in early December that sparked the idea of this song. We were talking about how her family lived borders away and how missing them just clouded her days no matter what she did. It’s such a sad but familiar feeling – I think everybody has felt a similar loneliness. All I wanted to tell her was that it’ll get better and brighter, so I wrote this song. 

ALL MY PLANTS ARE DYING

It’s the realization that you don’t have a good grip on your life and you feel like you’re running around with your hair on fire. It’s about coming to terms with how life is as an adult. Not being able to keep up with everything. And freaking out about it. 

CLICK

This song touches on the lowest point of my life. Where I felt like I was drowning in my mistakes and I was looking for solutions. I remember trying to draw from previous low points in my life and telling myself that eventually it’ll all click and I’ll figure it out. 

BET

This song is both a self wake-up call and an advice to younger kids that you shouldn’t live life hesitant. That it’s never too late and also never too early to start. To have confidence in yourself and to live life without regret. 

WHO WE WERE

This song is about past relationships coming back into your life not to haunt you, but to remind you how far you’ve come. It’s the realization that everyone and everything changes with time.

WYL

This track is about meeting someone for the first time and wanting to know more and more of them. Late night vibes. Cheeky, but romantic. 

CLEANING OUT THE FRIDGE 

I wrote this about wanting to press the restart button with your person. It’s about wanting to communicate with each other as clearly as possible and drop all egos and defensiveness. Cleaning out the fridge and airing it all out together. 

MANGOES AND RICE

I wrote this song about growing up Filipino-American. It’s a conversation with my sister about remembering our childhood and how we were raised and using that knowledge in present situations. 

LEADS (ME TO YOU) 

I love this one so much because it’s about looking back at everything and everywhere you’ve been and realizing that it’s what brought you to this person, or your own self, or however you want to apply it. Every loss and hardship was worth it in the end. 

BETTER

I wrote this song when I felt like I was always on the verge of a panic attack and I needed to lean on my person. I was spreading myself too thin, trying to stay afloat, but overcommitted myself and was paying the cost. 

FEBRUARY

This song is a love letter. I wanted it to feel the most intimate, raw, and unfiltered because that’s how it felt writing this one. 

PARALLEL

This song is such an uplifting, a-ha moment type of song. I wanted it to portray the feeling of when someone catches you by surprise. The moment where you realize the one you need has been right there all along. 

CODEPENDENT 

I wrote this song about being grateful for somebody whose confidence is contagious and who loves as equally as you do. Someone who can be there for you when you’re used to always having to be that for someone else. 

ANYBODY’S GUESS

This song is about coming to terms that you’ll never know what the future holds. And that it’s scary to think about but you just have to find a way to get through it. It’s like part two of “ALL MY PLANTS ARE DYING”.

SOL

The title track of the album, Sol is a song for my Grandma Sol. I remember spending afternoons with her, talking about life, her past, my future. I grew up on her advice. I view the process of writing this album as a self-journal while I navigate the intricacies of adulthood – a delicate balance of fighting for what you want but doing so gracefully, always trying to understand other sides. Whether she knows it or not, the way that I am is because of those afternoons we spent.