This week in dance music: A new album by Sophie, overseen by the late producer’s brother, is coming in September. Kygo, the human music producer, met a terminally ill dog also named Kygo at the former Kygo’s Palm Tree Music Festival in the Hamptons. Las Vegas’ Life Is Beautiful announced a new name, a new format and a September lineup with LCD Soundystem, Peggy Gou and Justice. We took a look at how the the Grammys’ new rule tweaks affect the dance/electronic categories and why DJs are playing so many dance covers. Deadmau5 expressed his displeasure over recent comments by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, Diplo was hit with a new “revenge porn” lawsuit and ADE 2024 added execs from Empire, Spotify, SoundCloud and more to the program for its event this October.
And last but never least, these are the best new dance tracks of the week.
Trending on Billboard
Channel Tres, Head Rush
“The new music I’m making now is just on another level,” Channel Tres told Billboard last year about the output that would become his debut album. And in fact, he was right — with the release of his Head Rush project demonstrating all the inventiveness and easy cool we’ve come to know, love and respect about the Los Angeles-based artist since he broke through circa 2018. Deftly folding in influences from gospel (“Joyful Noise”) to funk (“Candy Paint”) to industrial (“Berghain”), the 17-track album feels like Channel Tres throughout, and features a cool kid assemblage of collaborators including Toro y Moi, Ty Dolla $ign, Estelle, Ravyn Lenae, Thundercat, Teezo Touchdown and Barney Bones.
Out through RCA Records, it comes ahead of summer/fall festival performances at events including HARD Summer, Outside Lands, All Points East and III Points. “A lot of emotion went into this one,” Tres wrote about the LP release. “From it being my first album and then fighting the feelings of imposter syndrome. We here, I’m with you, ill be dancing on tour soon much love.”
LP Giobbi, “Bittersweet”
LP Giobbi’s latest release “Bittersweet” is as it sounds, with the brightness of the vocals (sung by Portugal. The Man’s John Gourley) met with a current of melancholy played out in the simultaneously lush-yet-restrained production. Combined the track gives the feeling of dancing through the tears — especially following the key change in the track’s jammy final third. “Bittersweet” is the first taste of Giobbi’s just-announced second album Dotr, coming this October via Ninja Tune, and written through (and about) the waves of grief the producer experienced after the loss of her mother in law, her longtime piano teacher and a close family friend. Named for the way the producer used sign notes to her parents, Dotr will feature collabs with Brittany Howard, Danielle Ponder, Panama and more artists.
“This album is a lot about what it is to be a daughter, have a daughter and love a daughter, as well as a way of honoring some of the most important women in my life,” the producer says in a statement. “There are also a lot of themes tied to home (the ones we create or the ones we were born into) which, for me, are reflected through my identity as a daughter.”
Isoknock & RL Grime, “Smack Talk”
It makes perfect sense for bass Jedi RL Grime to collaborate with genre phenoms Knock2 and Isoxo (working here together as Isoknock) with their long-awaited collab “Smack Talk” also being perfectly executed and predictably large. Together, the three SoCal-based artists raise an army of sound, with hip-hop influences, a church choir, air horns and straightforward headbanding drops altogether taking shape into the heavy, cinematic style that’s generating so much excitement around Isoxo and Knock2, and which has defined much of Grimes’ catalog.
Tycho, “Phantom”
Low-key legend Tycho returns with the lead single from the forthcoming Infinite Health, the oufit’s sixth studio album. “Phantom” gives ’80s synth pop filtered through a lens of AM radio, hitting the clean, cerebral vibe that’s defined so much of Tycho’s work, but with a slightly darker edge.
“I wanted ‘Phantom’ to feel like a blend of lights in a nightclub with some unknown entity; a moving and shifting intelligence that served as a conduit to a deeper understanding of what’s beneath the surface of existence,” says Tycho leader Scott Hansen. “It’s also about coming to terms with mortality, with the phantom being the ever-present specter. I spent more hours on this song than any other on the record.” Coming August 30 via Mom+Pop, Infinite Health will see the first North American tour from Tycho in five years.
Folamour, “Pressure Makes Diamonds”
On the tenth anniversary of the project, French producer Folamour offers a treatise about the challenges of a career in music, with the song’s title also functioning as its thesis statement. “Pressure Makes Diamonds” is cut from the same sonic cloth as previous tracks like “Poundland Anthem,” with the track made from layers and layers of bright synth, piano stabs, a swell of percussion and the artist’s own vocals, purred with a thick French accent.
