Dance music is experiencing another boom period, and this time the music is traveling faster and farther than ever, thanks to new streaming platforms and more fans getting access to making (and vibing to) an even broader slate of sounds. Here’s how to get involved.
5 Ways to Club Anywhere
Boiler Room
What began in 2010 as a single livestream called Boiler Room, with a webcam taped to a D.J. booth, has become not just a global proving ground but a rite of passage, and a catchall term for a format that’s changed the course of dance music.
Start here: Kaytranda’s devilishly chaotic, often hilarious 2013 Montreal session; a fun hour of soulful dance music that foreshadows big things to come for the artist and the format alike.
The Lot Radio
Started in 2016 on a triangle-shaped patch of gravel in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the Lot has drawn a wide range of top-tier talent to D.J. inside its sticker-covered booth (or as Charli XCX did last summer, dance on top of it).
Start here: The Japanese video game composer Takuya Nakamura, blasting an elegiac trumpet solo over drum-and-bass to mind-expanding effect.
NTS Radio
Femi Adeyemi created what may be the greatest anti-algorithm collection of D.J.s and music today, while reclaiming the power of live broadcast and the lost art of the radio show. (He was also involved in the founding of Boiler Room.) To wit: 40 percent of the music on NTS can’t be found on Spotify.
Start here: Moxie’s recent set at Public Records in New York brings the literal sound of the club right into your headphones — two purely excellent hours of house.
HOR Berlin
A D.J. in a tiny, tiled room, at the base of a former East Berlin broadcast tower — that’s it. And yet: In a raw, entirely unadorned environment that leaves nothing unexposed between decks and D.J., HOR Berlin has become an essential incubator for up-and-coming talent since it started in 2019.
Start here: HOR’s broadcast of the journeywoman D.J. Avalon Emerson’s set from Amsterdam’s Dekmantel festival in 2023 is absolutely electric.
Rinse FM
Born in 1994 in the great tradition of U.K. pirate radio, Rinse.FM had a few scuffles with the law before it eventually secured a broadcast license. It has always been an essential hub for the country’s homegrown talent, from grime and dubstep and well beyond: Rinse put out chart-topping records as a label and, in 2014, started Rinse France.
Start here: Any episode of Hessle Audio’s show. The label, co-founded by Ben UFO (a true D.J.’s D.J.), is eclectic, fun and wildly au courant. — Foster Kamer
5 Clubs Worth the Trip
Berghain
This Berlin institution, a former heat and power plant, began setting the standard for 21st-century nightlife bacchanalia when it opened in 2004. Its mercurial door policy, banging techno and sexual permissiveness have been often imitated but never duplicated.
Basement
A techno club in Maspeth, Queens, with (much like Berghain) a finicky door, and a strict anti-phone-camera policy. The former glass factory’s aesthetic is a mix of brick and concrete that its owners have referred to as an “industrial catacomb.” As industrial catacombs in New York go, it doesn’t get hotter than this club.
Fabric
London’s always-relevant Fabric has been open since 1999 (with a brief closure in 2016) and features three rooms, one equipped with a vibrating dance floor. But its most lasting legacy may be its adjacent record label, which has released a stellar series of recorded D.J. mixes featuring innumerable classics of the genre.
Rex Club
The legendary French dance producer and D.J. Laurent Garnier started throwing his Wake Up parties at Rex not long after it opened in 1992 under the landmark Parisian theater it’s named for. While it’s not quite what it used to be — Daft Punk no longer D.J. there — more than 30 years later, the 800-capacity club remains a staple of Parisian nightlife.
Nowadays
There are two New York clubs on this list, but that isn’t a matter of regional bias: The city’s nightlife scene, despite recent closures, remains the most robust in the country. Nowadays in Brooklyn, open since 2016, may now be its locus, famed for its Mister Sunday outdoor summer parties, its Nonstop nights that run 24 hours (if not more), its egalitarian vibes and its world-class bookings. — Rich Juzwiak and Kamer
5 Artists to Watch
Ell Murphy
On record, this London-based singer/producer/D.J. delivers soulful vocals over pumping U.K. garage-adjacent beats, often deconstructing and then reconstructing her voice to create a patchwork of hooky sounds similar to those that Marc “MK” Kinchen popularized in the ’90s. Live, Murphy spins records and sings over them, bridging her worlds.
Haai
The Australian-born, London-based Teneil Throssell, a.k.a. Haai, has worked with the xx’s Romy Madley Croft and Fred, again.., the beloved electronic musician turned Coldplay producer Jon Hopkins, the techno mastermind Daniel Avery and plenty of others. But her solo work — which includes psychedelic electronica, massive breakbeat sounds, anthemic synth-kissed songs and remarkably fun D.J. sets — continues to cement her reputation as a stand-alone talent.
Boys’ Shorts
The Greek duo — Vangelis (not the “Chariots of Fire” guy) and Tareq — specializes in neo-vintage sounds like old-school house and highly arpeggiated electronic disco. They are particularly adept at modernizing classics and offer re-edits of reliable floor-fillers like Janet Jackson’s “When I Think of You” and Snap!’s “The Power” on their Bandcamp page.
Horsegiirl
Talk about a commitment to the bit: The pseudonymous German D.J., producer and vocalist Horsegiirl wears a horse mask and sometimes sings about being a horse (see the 2023 viral hit “My Barn My Rules”). Her sound epitomizes the endless blending of established styles typical of modern dance music, though she favors subgenres often considered abject by dance snobs, like hardstyle and Eurodance. Like spinning hay into gold, Horsegiirl can make gauche sound cool.
Verraco
The distinctions between dance music subgenres are sometimes small to the point of parody. The Colombian artist Verraco renders them useless, imbuing a range of styles (techno, UK Bass, IDM and hardgroove, to name a few) with Latin American traditions like cumbia, dembow and guaracha. The result is a textured, varied funkiness that’s as great as it is difficult to pin down. Still, as his Boiler Room sets demonstrate, he’s also still a D.J. who, given a room full of people, can absolutely cook. — Juzwiak and Kamer
5 Tracks You Need to Know
Two Shell, ‘Mad Powers’
The anonymous London group Two Shell has a KLF-like mischievous streak and the tunes to back it up. The fizzy “Mad Powers,” from its 2024 self-titled album, exemplifies its stuttered approach to hyperpop, with warped vocals percolating over a frenetic, ping-ponging beat.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Eartheater featuring Shygirl, ‘Shark Brain’
A trans-Atlantic team-up between the Queens-based Eartheater and London’s Shygirl, “Shark Brain” is of two minds. The machine-like whir and laconic, trap-like tempo of the opener give way to a peppier pumping beat a little more than halfway through. Duality is of the essence here — Eartheater said the song was inspired by “the uncanny resemblance a hammerhead shark brain has to the female reproductive system.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Sherelle, ‘Freaky (Just My Type)’
A highlight from the London D.J. and producer’s recent “With a Vengeance” album, “Freaky (Just My Type)” marries the kind of speedy breakbeats Sherelle favors with a bouncy bass drum and an R&B swagger, thanks to vocals from George Riley.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Sobstory, ‘Help I’m Lost’
A sugar rush of a track, “Help I’m Lost” fuses a driving techno beat, ravey keyboards and pitched-up vocals. Similar to the insistent yet earwormy work of the D.J. and producer Salute, Sobstory (the duo of Oliver and Villhelm) achieves a kind of bubble-gum sensibility without sacrificing hardness.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
Floorplan, ‘We Give Thee Honor’
The Detroit techno pioneer Robert Hood and his daughter Lyric Hood are Floorplan, and they make dance music that is infused with the Holy Spirit. “We Give Thee Honor,” from their 2024 full-length “The Master’s Plan,” floats an impassioned gospel choir over a four-on-the-floor stomp, achieving dance floor divinity.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube — Juzwiak
5 Boiler Room Sets Worth Dancing To
Floating Points
Over the course of a year and change, Floating Points released an album and music for an anime and a ballet. But D.J.ing for five hours — on vinyl — in Brooklyn’s steamiest, sweatiest room last summer might have topped it all. Making a one-hour Boiler Room session compelling is hard enough, but Floating Points deployed no gimmickry or shenanigans — just talent and physical endurance, putting on a clinic in selection and mixing skill, driving a packed room to collective transcendence in the process.
Jayda G
The Canadian D.J. Jayda G opened a 2023 set from London with the sounds of the Detroit legend Moodymann, ended it with the high priest of neo-soul, D’Angelo — and somehow, Taylor Swift landed in the middle. (Remarkably, it worked.) But the set became a classic the moment she vamped along to Clivilles & Cole’s “A Deeper Love.” There’s a fine line between a Boiler Room D.J. being sincerely enraptured in what they’re spinning and playing it up for the cameras — but by the time Jayda G closes with “I’ve Found My Smile Again,” it’s impossible not to believe in her joy.
Eris Drew B2B Octo Octa
Two of the most exciting names in the world of dance music right now are a trans couple who espouse the transformative potential of the dance floor. They’re phenomenal D.J.s who play everything from house to breaks, trance to techno, but their specialty is less rooted in genre than it is in euphoria, as demonstrated by this contagiously fun hour at Australia’s Sugar Mountain festival in 2019, where they traded rave classics and breakbeat in an all-vinyl set.
Salute B2B Barry Can’t Swim
While not technically a Boiler Room, this similarly formatted recording from a 2024 music festival in Sydney features two artists putting out consistently great records: the Belgium-born Salute, a producer who makes genre-crossing house music blasted through with sunshine, and the Scottish producer Barry Can’t Swim, a classically trained pianist making soulful, worldly records. At this event, the pair appeared to be having a better time playing music with friends than anyone else on the planet, and the crowd responded in kind.
Carl Cox
Long before Fred, again.. ever tapped his drum machine to fame on Boiler Room, there was the British D.J. Carl Cox, blasting a set of steel drums into outer space in someone’s backyard. These 45 minutes from an Ibiza villa in 2013 have racked up nearly 70 million YouTube views (the most for any Boiler Room besides one from Solomun). There’s a reason people keep watching this living dance music legend in the heyday of his Space Ibiza residency, playing a flawless set of Balearic house that transmutes the energy of a club filled with thousands of people to a pool party with about 50 of them. — Kamer
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