Friday Dance Music Guide: The Week’s Best New Tracks From Major Lazer & M.I.A., Deadmau5, Qrion & More

This week in dance music: Illenium shared the genuinely tear-jerking backstory of his 2021 track “Brave Soul,” and while half the nation experienced another reason to cry, Moby offered some sage advice after election day. Meanwhile, a new Avicii documentary is coming to Netflix on New Year’s Eve, Charli XCX and Troye Sivan made a cool $28 million on their recent Sweat Tour, Shygirl took us backstage on that run with her Sweat Tour photo diary, Dubfire told us why all is well in the state of techno and the 2025 Grammy nominations were announced, with Justice, Zedd, Charli, Kaytranada, Four Tet and a gaggle of other scene stars getting nominated in the best dance/electronic categories.

And through all of it, the beat goes on. These are the best new dance tracks of the week.

Major Lazer & M.I.A., “Where’s The Daddy?”

“Where’s the Daddy” is an old/new venture, with the track dating back to the earliest days of Major Lazer, when the internet was looser, the algorithms but a glimmer in the eyes of the world wide web and Diplo and M.I.A. were working together on her second album, Kala, while also dating. These most O.G. members and affiliates of Major Lazer, the first iteration of which of course also included British producer Switch, reunite 15 years later with the official release of “Where’s the Daddy.” The track is classic early day Major Lazer — a woozy, stoney, dancehall-influenced production that sounds like both Major Lazer, Kala and everything else the artists were releasing around this time. M.I.A. is here with her signature singsong vocals, with lyrics that seem to find her searching for her baby daddy, with the song laced with a sample of a crying baby.

To make the point crystal clear, M.I.A. appears pregnant in the music video — in which she, Diplo and Switch drive up and down the Pacific Coast Highway in L.A. in a Tesla Cybertruck, uniting old sounds and old pals with a nod to an impending dystopic future in which pregnancy is a government mandate and transportation is provided by Emperor Elon. The song is out in conjunction with the 15-year anniversary of Major Lazer’s culture-shaking 2009 debut, Guns Don’t Kill People…Lazers Do, a deluxe re-release of which is coming out next week (on Diplo’s Mad Decent, natch) with a collection of additional unreleased tracks and remixes.

“Major Lazer’s origin story is a jumbled-up mess,” Diplo says in a statement. “It reads more like a villain story. I knew about Switch from being the weirdest and hardest DJ in London, and he was interested in my local scene in Philly — Spank Rock, Amanda Blank, Santigold, Plastic Little. M.I.A. got mixed up in the project when me and Dave were summoned by XL Recordings to make beats for her. I failed miserably, but I made a mixtape, Piracy Funds Terrorism, and Dave had a few bangers around town. We made too many beats for her, so we decided to go record them in Jamaica because the artists there are extremely talented, and the productions were cutting edge. We made this Major Lazer album down there and started a little movement that ended up with a few billion streams. It’s cool to put out ‘Where’s the Daddy?’ now because M.I.A. was the third daddy of Major Lazer.”

Deadmau5, “Re_Jaded”

Like Major Lazer, Deadmau5 is digging into the archives this week, re-releasing his 2007 track “Jaded” on an EP that also includes a new edit by Volaris, a new ambient remix by Deadmau5 along with his own new Re-Jaded” edit. This latter production sands off all the harder edges of the already beautifully smooth progressive house original and forms it into a 12-minute opus that’s quintessential classic ‘mau5. The project is out on Mau5trap.

Qrion, “Keep on Moving Up”

Texas-born producer Qrion releases the fourth single from her forthcoming album, We Are Always Under the Same Sky. “Keep on Moving Up” stacks up layers of synth into a bright but weighty house track, which balances the same ebullience and depth in its themes. Qrion sings about keeping on “moving up, moving up while I”m young,” with the track written about getting sober following a period of addiction after her father passed away. She says the song is about “hitting rock bottom and challenging myself to conquer small goals, gradually working my way up to larger ones. The lyric ‘Don’t Know Where I’m Going’ reflects the uncertainty of my first year of sobriety after rehab, capturing the struggle and growth of finding my path forward.” We wish her well on this path, which includes the release of We Are Always Under the Same Sky via Anjunadeep on January 17.

Will Clarke, Midnight Mass

Longtime scene fixture Will Clarke releases his debut album, Midnight Mass, on Armada Music. The 13-track project is as it sells itself — music to find salvation to in the afterhours. Styles oscillate between buzzy IDM (“Breakthrough,” “Summit”), classic gospel house (“Weekend Love”) and the style of moody progressive house Clarke helped popularize in the last few years as a co-writer on the 2023 deadmau5/Kaskade hit “Escape.” Vocalists including blythe, Karen Harding, Georgia Meek all help bring femininity and soul to the tracks, with blythe’s turn on the album-closing “You Alone” delivering a classic makeout music moment.

Bedouin feat. Iveta, “Better Than This”

After rinsing the tracks all summer at their Pacha Ibiza residency, Brooklyn-based duo Bedouin releases its two-track Into the Wind EP. The project opens with “Better Than This,” a simmering YOLO goes tot he club track about getting loose tonight and dealing with the aftermath tomorrow. The pair have been working on the song for a year, and you can feel the work in the style and meticulous structure of this one. “It’s a song about embracing the present moment, because that’s all we truly have,” they say. “As we journey forward, it’s the mystery of that path that keeps us alive.”

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