Friday Dance Music Guide: The Week’s Best New Tracks From Kaytranada, Peggy Gou, Swedish House Mafia & More
Written by djfrosty on June 7, 2024
This week in dance music: Cercle, known for producing DJ sets in fantastical locations, announced a touring show set to launch in 2025; Jamie xx announced that his first solo studio album in nine years is coming out this September; Kygo invited a terminally ill dog that is also named Kygo to his Palm Tree Music Festival later this month; Illenium responded to criticism of poster art made by AI; we shared a posthumous performance from late disco legend Sylvester; we spoke with the queen Sophie Ellis-Bextor; Walker & Royce and Boombox Cartel were announced as two artists on the schedule for a new club opening in Las Vegas next month; Lorde praised Charli XCX’s new club-focused album, Brat; and we counted down the top 70 LGBTQ+ anthems of all time in honor of Pride month.
And to round out it all out, these are the best new dance tracks of the week.
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Kaytranada feat. Channel Tres, “Drip Sweat”
The release of a new Kaytranada album is basically a high holiday in the dance world, and today we celebrate. The producer’s third full length, Timeless, is out via RCA, coming five years after his last solo LP, Bubba (winner of the 2020 Grammy for best dance/electronic album) and his 2023 collaborative album with Aminé, Kaytraminé. The hefty Timeless — 21 tracks if you count the four bonus songs — is a swaggering opus embodying a type of cerebral cool that feels simultaneously effortless and deeply considered. No surprise, then, that guests seemed to be scrambling to get on the project, with Timeless containing collabs with with Childish Gambino, Anderson .Paak, Don Toliver, Dawn Richard, Rochelle Jordan, Tinashe, Thundercat and PinkPantheress, and previous collaborator Channel Tres, who lends his velvet vocals to the tough, sexy club track “Drip Sweat.” Meanwhile, Kaytra sings on his own music for the first time with “Stepped On” and features his little brother, the rapper Lou Phelps, on “Call U Up.”
Peggy Gou, I Hear You
The South Korean producer’s debut album has enjoyed an exceptionally long, uniquely potent lead time after its first single “It Goes Like (Nanana)” went crazy viral upon its release last summer. But the full project, out via XL Recordings, demonstrates that that success wasn’t a fluke, with the single existing neatly alongside nine songs that together add up to an album that’s cohesive, fully formed and predictably chic. Much has been made of Gou taking influence from ’90s dance music for the album, and she incorporates the sound in a pleasing, soft-focused ’90s movie soundtrack style (particularly on “All That,” “I Go” and “Purple Horizon”) without ever veering into pastiche.
“I can’t believe we’re finally here,” Gou wrote Thursday (June 6) on Instagram. “Tomorrow is going to be a big day for me, I already feel my emotions taking over. I Hear You represents so much more than my first album, I’ve dreamt about this for over a decade. Everything I’ve worked for has been towards achieving this goal. Thanks everyone who was involved in this album, it means a lot to me.”
Swedish House Mafia feat. Niki & The Dove, “Lioness”
It’s been nearly a year since Swedish House Mafia released its last single, “Ray of Solar,” with the hype for more new music from the Swedes being stoked by the trio themselves when they teased “Lioness” during a set at Brooklyn Mirage in April and during Steve Angello’s solo set at Coachella. Recruiting Swedish electronic duo Niki & The Dove for vocals, the bright, flute-forward song contains shades of the melody from Santigold’s 2008 classic “Shove It” and altogether extends the experimental, pop-forward house music that the legends have embraced since their 2022 comeback album Paradise Again.
Lszee, “French Dream”
While born in France, CloZee has become one of the key artists making the very American funk/bass/jazz hybrid popular among ravers who prefer partying in the woods over nightclubs. The Denver-based producer has linked with Lsdream (who used to make music as Brillz) for their new collaborative project Lszee, with the pair coming hot out the gate with “French Dream,” a psychedelic swirl of crunchy bass and horns that comes alongside a second deliciously wobbly single, “Chrysalis.” The pair will headline Electric Forest in Michigan later this month, headline Red Rocks in October and at some point in the near-ish future also release a full album of music forged from their two clearly quite complimentary styles.
Dom Dolla, “Girl$”
A portion of the Dom Dolla catalog has possessed a sort of delicious strangeness, going back to his happily weird and extremely vibey 2018 single “Take It.” That element of the Australian producer’s artistry is at the fore on his latest “Girl$” an acid trip of a tech house track out via Threesixzero. Featuring vocals from Caitlin Stubbs, the hypnotic yet unabashedly peaktime track is a diatribe about modern day dating, with Dolla writing that the song “was inspired by a conversation I had with some friends who were all tired of bad dates… and had eventually come to the conclusion they were giving up on the whole charade.” If this is music to give up to, we’ll take it.
Floating Points, “Del Oro”
Dance music renaissance man Floating Points shifts gears from the theater — his orchestra and electronics composition Mere Mortals recently closed a second sold out run with the San Francisco Ballet — into dancefloor mode with “Del Oro.” The producer’s first release since 2023’s excellent “Birth4000,” the track (out via Ninja Tune) is a master class in pacing, rising and falling several times over its lush six minutes and coming in tandem with an elegant video from Tokyo based artist Akiko Nakayama long-time collaborators Hamill Industries.