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Miami’s III Points festival has announced its full 2024 lineup. The bill includes trip-hop legends Massive Attack, French superstars Justice, U.K. favorites Disclosure, Jamie xx, PinkPantheress and Jungle, rappers Rick Ross and Yung Lean, white hot bass producer ISOxo, hard techno phenom Sara Landry, Kaytranada and Rezz, Brazilian producers Jungle and Mochakk, along with Arca, Cloonee, Pawsa and many more.
Along with these internationally known names, the electronic festival will feature a load of local talent from the South Florida region.
III Points, which hosts approximately 50,000 attendees, returns to Miami’s Mana Wynwood Oct. 18-20. Tickets are on sale now.
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“I think it’s just very authentically Miami, and a real time capsule of Miami sonically and visually right now,” III Points co-founder David Sinopoli told Billboard of the festival in 2023. “I think people feel that when they come.”
III Points has been a staple of the Miami festival scene since its launch in 2013. Its co-founder Sinopoli is also the co-owner of the city’s famed nightclub Space, which he, along with Davide Danese and Coloma Kaboomsky, took over in 2016. Space is currently closed for the summer as it undergoes renovations that its owners announced will “allow us to dance together for many years to come.” The club is scheduled to reopen this fall.
Sinopoli is also the owner and operator of Miami’s Factory Town, a 190,000-square foot arts and nightlife complex built in a World War II-era mattress factory, as well as the city’s cocktail bar Floyd and sound room Jolene. In 2019, III Points partnered with electronic festival giant Insomniac Events, as the company took an ownership stake in Space and became partners in all of Sinopoli’s business ventures.
See the III Points lineup below:
There aren’t too many singer-songwriters making brainy, avant-leaning dance-pop that appeals equally to the hips, the head and the heart, but Róisín Murphy has always been one of a kind. From her time in the duo Moloko in the ‘90s to her no-misses solo discography that includes electropop classics such as Overpowered (2007) and Róisín Machine (2020), she never fails to deliver, particularly on stage. So when the Irish artist hits the U.S. for a tour, people turn out – and sure enough, a packed audience spanning generations and state lines (some folks drove more than four hours to see her) greeted Murphy when she played New York City’s Brooklyn Paramount on Friday (June 7).
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With a title like Hit Parade Tour, one might wonder if the trek is Murphy’s version of Madonna’s Celebration Tour or Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, both career-spanning global treks that played to enthusiastic (well, mostly) crowds and critical raves. And while Hit Parade is, more directly, the name of her 2023 album (which she followed this year with the companion piece Hit Parade Remixes), you wouldn’t be too far off.
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Over the course of a lengthy, muscular set, Murphy performed four tunes from her old band, one from her solo debut, three tracks from Overpowered, and four apiece from Róisín Machine and Hit Parade. Hardly career-encompassing (two albums were skipped), but a pretty healthy mix of beloved catalog and more recent material spanning a quarter of a century.
Throughout those years, Murphy’s substantial vocal chops have only seemed to improve with each release. During her show at the gorgeously restored, dramatically lit Brooklyn Paramount, she performed peerless electropop without singing to track (almost unheard of in pop) in front of a live band that provided every rubbery bass line, shimmering synth and razor-sharp beat in real time. (Originally a movie palace that opened at the top of the talking pictures era, Brooklyn Paramount turned into a live venue that housed everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Buddy Holly in the ’50s before shutting down to the wider public for decades; it only reopened as a concert space this year thanks to Live Nation and Arcadis.)
As a fashion-forward artist frequently inspired by drag and queer culture (more than a few chart-topping pop stars with larger profiles have followed in her footsteps), Murphy brought a mix of camp, eleganza and couture to the show, changing her outfit for nearly every song – sometimes while still singing.
The wild costuming and nonstop dance party clearly resonated with her substantial queer fanbase, who turned out in big numbers at the Brooklyn Paramount despite Murphy’s controversial comments last year. In Aug. 2023, a screenshot from Murphy’s Facebook account called puberty blockers – a go-to boogeyman for people targeting the trans community – “F—KED.” Shortly after, she released a statement apologizing for her “directly hurtful” comments, affirming her commitment to “celebrating diversity” without directly backtracking on the issue; she did, however, promise to “bow out of this conversation within the public domain.” Since then, fans – who had previously expressed widespread disappointment in her comments – have mostly dropped the topic, and it didn’t seem to impact her ticket sales too much, at least based on the NYC turnout. (In 2023, she played Terminal 5, which fits about 300 more people than the Brooklyn Paramount does – not enough of a drop in venue size to extrapolate anything meaningful.)
Notwithstanding her regressive, unnecessary take on trans youth, Murphy continues to craft, record and execute some of the most innovative dance-pop of this century. And on her latest trek, it comes to life in all its beautiful, bizarre splendor.
Upcoming Hit Parade Tour Dates
June 10 – HISTORY – Toronto, Canada
June 11 – Riviera Theatre – Chicago, IL
June 13 – Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival – Manchester, TN
June 15 – The Fillmore Miami Beach – Miami, FL
November 1 – Roseland Theater – Portland, OR
November 2 – Moore Theatre – Seattle, WA
November 3 – Vogue Theatre – Vancouver, Canada
November 7 – The Shrine Expo Hll – Los Angeles, CA
November 9 – The Warfield – San Francisco, CA
When Charli XCX presented her creative team with her idea for the brat album artwork – black pixelated text splashed across a green backdrop – “we were skeptical,” says creative director Imogene Strauss. “She had a very clear vision for what she wanted, though…The goal wasn’t to make something that everyone is going to like, it was to make something that will make people think about why they don’t like it.”
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And with time, Charli’s prediction that fans would have a strong reaction to the cover image proved correct. “There was a moment in this campaign where the public consensus online was that Charli’s album cover was lazy and ugly, which of course was her whole goal,” adds photographer Terrence O’Connor. “Charli’s natural instinct is to go against the grain, which is why she’s so inspiring.”
From the start of her career over a decade ago — when she notched three top 10s on the Billboard Hot 100 from 2013-2014 — Charli XCX has not just leaned left of center, but over time has become a new center entirely. And not only does her sixth album brat (out on Atlantic today, June 7) solidify as much, but it celebrates that fact — while also occasionally bemoaning it. (As she sings on “Rewind”: I used to never think about Billboard/But, now, I’ve started thinking again/Wondering ’bout whether I think I deserve commercial success.”)
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Even before the album arrived, its rollout was accompanied by praise from pop peers across the spectrum. While backstage at Billboard’s Women In Music event this March, Katy Perry expressed her love for Charli, complimenting how “amazing” she sounded during her performance. (More recently, fans online have cited Charli as a reference point for Perry’s own album rollout, from the hyperpop typeface of KP6 to her fashion and photography). And just yesterday (Thursday, June 6), after listening through brat, Lorde wrote on her Instagram Stories that, “There is NO ONE like this b—h.”
As the creative team around Charli says, that singularity is exactly what drew them to her in the first place. “I’ve always been a hardcore pop music fan, but I never totally align with the aesthetics,” says Strauss. “I want something more challenging.” Stylist Chris Horan, who started working with Charli before the 2022 release of her fifth album Crash, shares a similar attraction. “We bonded over references of what makes a main pop girl not only iconic but immediately recognizable,” he says of meeting Charli. “Her look is bitchy and distinct. It’s never fully polished – there’s always something a little f–ked up.”
By riding on the outskirts of pop music for so long – dating back to her early days performing as a teen at illegal raves in London – Charli has ultimately paved a parallel path where counterculture can coexist with the genre. For her, the challenge is in deciding how much she cares about how that coexistence is received. As she told Billboard earlier this year in her Women In Music Powerhouse interview, “My big struggle is deciding whether I care more about being the biggest artist I can be commercially, or being critically sound. Then sometimes I land in this place of not caring about either of those things.”
Yet, that ambivalence is exactly what defines her influence and aesthetic, from the “lazy” brat album art to her “never fully polished” look. As Strauss believes, Charli is particularly resonating so much right now because fans and artists alike are over the “play it safe aesthetic of the 2010s.”
Charli, on the other hand, is not only comfortable with risk, but could teach a master class in curated mess, whether she’s trolling fans on X (formerly known as Twitter) or alluding to copycats on TikTok. As O’Connor says: “It really doesn’t matter if people copy our ideas, because next week we’ll have a whole batch of new ones… We just laugh and move on – unless we’re feeling fun and annoying, then she does something that gets her in trouble, but that’s also cool.”
But no matter how Charli’s every move has been received or replicated, it has all fueled the hyperpop hyperdream that was the brat rollout – from her viral Brooklyn Boiler Room rave in February, dubbed Party Girl (for which she wore an oversized shirt that read: “CULT CLASSIC”) to her widely-discussed “360” music video that arrived in May, in which she and her friends (including Chloe Cherry, Quenlin Blackwell, Julia Fox, Rachel Sennott and more) are pressed to find “a new hot internet girl” — or in other words, an influencer to join their ranks.
Strauss recalls the premiere for the video well, in large part because of something Charli said: “It’s hard to be ahead.” Reflecting on the remark now, Strauss says, “I think this is very true. Doing things first almost never means you’re going to be the biggest or most famous. Being the reference means you have to make choices that go against the status quo.”
Which is exactly what Charli has always done. And now, as a result, she has not only managed to make being anti-cool cool, but perhaps more importantly made an album undeniably assured and contagiously cocky. With lyrics like, “It’s okay to just admit that you’re jealous of me” (“Von Dutch”), the point of brat is not whether such declarations are true, but that an artist like Charli XCX is saying them at all.
As the opening lyric of “360” goes: “I went my own way and I made it.”
“She doesn’t need to abide by anyone’s rules – that makes her career so enviable to other artists,” says Horan. “A lot of people want to replicate the essence of Charli, but she truly is one of one.”
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”
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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
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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”
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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”
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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$”
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A portion of the Dom Dolla catalog has possessed a sort of delicious strangeness, going back to his happily weird and extremely vibey 2018 single “Take It.” That element of the Australian producer’s artistry is at the fore on his latest “Girl$” 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”
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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.
One of the country’s busiest nightclub markets is getting an addition, with a new club called Substance set to open in Las Vegas on July 12.
The venue will be booked by Las Vegas-based entertainment promotion/production company Rvltn Events, which is partnering with dance behemoth Insomniac Events and the Latin-focused Altura for artist bookings.
The space opens July 12 with a set from house duo Walker & Royce. The summer calendar also includes dance producers Kshmr, Boombox Cartel and Crankdat, with additional artist announcements forthcoming. Saturday nights at the club will focus on Latin music, with the venue also set to feature genres including regional Mexican, rock, R&B, reggae and more.
A single-story, 18,000-square foot venue on Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, Substance is located inside the Neonopolis entertainment complex. The space will have an industrial aesthetic, a large-scale LED installation and graffiti and other art by visual artist Gear Duran.
Rvltn is operated by partners Marcel Correa and Joe Borusiewicz, who are also the owners of Substance. The Rvltn Events family also includes Altura Presents, the house and techno-focused Elation and the New Year’s Eve event Jackpot.
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“Growing up in Las Vegas, we’ve always loved our great city and its incredible potential to become a thriving local music scene,” Correa and Borusiewicz said in a joint statement. “We’ve attended countless shows, festivals and events here, and our passion has always been about serving our fellow locals.
“As promoters, working with various venues throughout the city has given us deep insight into what works and what doesn’t — from guest experience and operations to overall strategy. No one enjoys paying $30 for parking or navigating a casino just to attend an event. People dislike strict dress codes, long lines for drinks and bathrooms, poor sound quality and gouging fees. At Substance, our goal is to create an entertainment destination that addresses these issues, incorporating everything we’d want as event producers and local music fans. We can’t wait to unveil our most exciting venture to date.”
When she took to the stage during OUTLOUD at WeHo Pride on Saturday (June 1), Sophie Ellis-Bextor certainly did not kill the groove.
In an interview with Billboard News before her set, the “Murder on the Dancefloor” singer spoke about her love for Pride events, saying that she was honored to be included among artists such as Kylie Minogue, Janelle Monáe and plenty of others.
“It’s a very inclusive, supportive, warm audience,” she says. “I know we talk a lot about being your authentic self to the point where we kind of don’t think about what that means. But actually, being able to feel comfortable in your own skin is one of the biggest things you can do for someone … I think the fact you get that in a very pure form at events like Pride is just a really joyous thing.”
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The singer added that after the shutdowns caused by COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, Pride events have felt “particularly moving” for the last few years. “I know how significant that made family is for the community. So, the fact that people might have been at home and unable to see their friends was a really significant loss,” she says.” When we were all back together, and looking at this sea of very young faces, it made me feel quite emotional.”
Ellis-Bextor said that she can trace her journey as an artist through the various Pride events she’s played through her career. “I can kind of credit pretty much everything about how I perform to my relationship with my LGBTQ+ audience,” she says. “Because it’s been those shows that I’ve done that have really kind of crystallized and helped me feel safe on stage, excited and relaxed. My lack of inhibition is completely down to them.”
The singer has already had a massive 2024, thanks to the resurgence of “Murder on the Dancefloor” after the song was featured in Emerald Fennell’s 2023 thriller Saltburn. Climbing to No. 51 on the Billboard Hot 100 more than 20 years after it was originally released, Ellis-Bextor says she’s grateful to be seen by a whole new audience as a result.
“The whole reason I’m here in L.A. today is because of what happened with ‘Murder’ and Saltburn, because that’s what gave me the opportunity to tour here. It’s been amazing,” she says. “There will be some young people who only remember me as the ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ lady — but to be honest, that’s absolutely fine with me.”
Watch Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s full interview with Billboard News above.
Dance headliner Illenium has taken to X to respond to fans roasting him online for using artificial intelligence to design a flier for his upcoming four-night run at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news On Monday, Illenium announced four […]
Earlier this week a video featuring a terminally ill dog named Kygo went viral. The handsome pup is a seven-year old husky, malamute, poodle and collie mix who’s been diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer. While Kygo the dog is currently receiving radiation treatments, in the video, his owner advises that “he doesn’t have much longer.”
The pup is of course named after the Norwegian electronic music producer, with the dog’s owner also declaring in the video, “I wish Kygo would run into him one day … The only thing I have left is for him to meet Kygo the DJ.”
“Does anyone know Kygo the DJ?” the video’s host, Elias Weiss Friedman, founder of the dog-focused social channel The Dogist, says to the camera.
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Apparently someone did, as a day after the video was posted, the producer wrote, “See you at Palm Tree Fest Hamptons… Can’t wait to meet you” on the post. The comment has gotten nearly 24,000 likes as of press time.
Representatives for Kygo the DJ and Kygo the dog did not immediately respond to Billboard’s request for comment.
This meeting of the Kygos will happen at the Palm Tree Music Festival happening in The Hamptons on June 22. Kygo will headline the event alongside Swedish House Mafia, with Purple Disco Machine, Sofi Tukker and Xandra rounding out the bill.
The next iteration of Palm Tree Festival happens in Lake Tahoe in July, with Kygo’s manager, Myles Shear, telling Billboard in 2022 that the traveling festival is a core element of the Kygo brand intended not simply to gather Kygo fans in luxe travel destinations, but to “create an ecosystem” in which they can live the boats and beaches-centric Kygo lifestyle.
This time, at least, that audience will include both human and canine music lovers.
Watch the video about Kygo the dog below:
The long-awaited followup to Jamie xx‘s debut album is now a reality. On Tuesday (June 4), the British producer announced that his sophomore studio LP, In Waves, will be released via his own Young label on Sept. 20. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The 12-track album […]
Cercle, the Paris-based production company known for putting on livestream DJ sets in far-flung locations, will take a touring show on the road in 2025.
Called Cercle Odyssey, the show will be built as a 360-degree panorama projection designed to create an immersive experience. The set-up will features a number of massive screens meant to envelope the audience, with these screens measuring roughly 40-feet high and 180-feet long, with high definition footage synchronized with the music.
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Hitting the road in 2015, the show will feature music and artists of all genres, with artists, dates and cities to be announced in the coming months. Cercle Odyssey videos will be overseen by Paris-based director Neels Castillon, the co-founder of Motion Palace, a creative studio that produces original content for brands, culture, and the arts. Focused on humanity, nature and beauty, the videos will be based on the story of Homer’s Odyssey and focus on the theme of returning home.
Cercle Odyssey is also designed to be a sustainable operation, with all of the sound, light and projection equipment used in each performance rented locally in each respective performance city. The company notes that by using 29 state-of-the-art projectors instead of traditional LED screens to illuminate the scenography, the show doesn’t necessitate the transport of a huge number of LED screens, thereby reducing the carbon emissions of transporting the show.
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Phones will be banned inside the performances, and guests will instead be given filmed content from the performance they attend.
“Cercle’s mission is and will always be to create unique stages for unique artists,” Cercle’s creative director Derek Barbolla tells Billboard. “We have just reached one billion views on our videos, we realized that many people want to experience Cercle, but traveling to Egypt or to the top of a mountain isn’t easy or feasible for everyone. With Cercle Odyssey, we’re bringing the experience closer to people’s homes, whilst continuing with our heritage site events”
Since launching in 2016, Cercle has produced 240 events in locations around the world including a Bolivian salt flat, the Eiffel Tower, a peak in the Alps and other locales including roughly 30 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Participating artists have included Disclosure, Peggy Gou, Above & Beyond, Carlita, Amelie Lens, Hot Since 82 and many more.
Cercle Odyssey
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Cercle Odyssey
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