Blog - EDM

11 years after "Sleepless" sent shockwaves through high school aux cords, Ekonovah has stepped in to give Cazzette's 2014 dance classic a glossy, high-octane facelift.

For those who have ever felt that house music can be a time machine, his official remix is your first-class ticket. Ekonovah takes the original's haunting, vocoded vocals and supercharges them into a euphoric sprint, transforming a nostalgic house anthem into a cinematic beast for 2025's dancefloors.

The arrangement builds like a pressure cooker, ultimately releasing into a brisk and breathtaking drop. Here, he trades the original's brooding pulse for a head-rushing energy that feels like sprinting through a memory you didn't know you missed.

Remixing a track as beloved as "Sleepless" is brave, but the EDM.com Class of 2023 artist pulls it off with flair, injecting emotion without drowning in sentimentality. Cazzette hand-picked him for the task, according to a press release.

"'Sleepless' is one of those songs that brings me back to high school and those early days where I began falling in love with house music," Ekonovah said. "It’s not every day that you’re asked to remix a legendary piece of dance music history. It’s an honor, and I’d like to think I did the song justice."

You can listen to the new remix below.

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Back in 2012 inside a Toronto penthouse, a domestic shorthair cat once gazed out over Yonge–Dundas Square, his own face beaming back at him in LED glory from a billboard below. "Do you even fucking know? Do you care?" Joel Zimmerman, better known as deadmau5, recalls asking him of the massive album ad featuring his face.

The cat didn't. Typical.

But in true deadmau5 fashion, where innovation meets self-deprecation, Meowingtons' indifference didn't stop him from becoming a muse. And now, posthumously, a playable one.

Zimmerman has unveiled Meowingtons Simulator, a tribute to his late companion, who sadly passed away in August 2023. Developed under his newly launched Oberha5li Studios banner and powered by Epic Games' Unreal Engine, it's a rhythm-based rag doll game where players control a digitized, dancing Meowingtons in a virtual nightclub.

"Meowingtons was basically a rag doll in real life," Zimmerman tells EDM.com. "You'd pick him up and he'd just flop. You could make him dance and he was just cool with it, which was really funny."

A famous 1935 thought experiment by the theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger illustrated the oddity of quantum mechanics by imagining a cat in a sealed box that is simultaneously alive and dead until someone observes it. Like Schrödinger's cat, Meowingtons now exists in its own quantum state of parody and poignancy.

But don't mistake Meowingtons Simulator for therapy in disguise. While it does function as a sort of eulogy in code, it's more so a seedbed for Zimmerman's big ambitions with his new game development studio.

"It's not a grief process or coping mechanism," he insists. "Meowingtons lived to be 16. That's pretty alright, so it's not like 'woe is me.' I processed it in a day, maybe two. It happens."

Ever since Zimmerman got into game development, he says, he's been learning about rag doll physics in Unreal Engine. One of his earliest experiments was building a cat model that behaved and looked like his own, the first prototype of which was a low-poly kitty with no fur, flopping around with the grace of a drunk sock puppet.

When activated by the cue button, the cat transitions from procedural animation into rag doll mode, where its movements are entirely governed by gravity and physics. Zimmerman compares the dynamics to a concept he admits is "really dark": imagine holding a lifeless cat by its head and tail, then watching it flop around as though it's "nodding to the beat."

The sim's rag doll physics create the illusion of the cat dancing to the music, akin to a puppet's movements, but without showing the strings. Zimmerman likens it to the unsettling realities behind the production of hot dogs: it works, but it's better not to ask how.

Oberha5li Studios

It's the kind of thing that only someone who's spent years in Unreal Engine forums and nerding out over real-time audiovisual mechanics can appreciate. That passion led him to meet Aaron McLeran and Max Hayes, Epic Games' Lead Audio Programmer and Senior Audio Programmer, respectively. They worked on the bleeding-edge Quartz subsystem, a sample-accurate timing engine that syncs audio with precision far beyond standard frame rates.

Zimmerman emphasizes the need for hyper-precise synchronization between audio and visual elements to avoid lag in game engines, where even minuscule misalignments are noticeable. In most games, he explains, visuals are rendered at a relatively low rate of between 60 and 120 frames per second. However, audio operates on a much finer timescale, at 48,000 samples per second, which means audio events can happen in sub-microsecond intervals.

This massive difference, which he refers to as a "chasm," makes it difficult to tightly sync visual cues with specific audio samples, like a kick drum or snare hit. That's where the processing of Quartz came in.

Running parallel to Unreal Engine, the tech, for which Zimmerman has a deep fascination, essentially acts as a reliable metronome for audio within it. The system enabled him to cue visuals and gameplay events exactly in time with the music, even at unconventional tempos with pesky decimals like 128.6 BPM.

"So it's that technology that really drove me to [game creation] and finding these different use cases," he says. "Then it was a marriage of, let's take my rag doll cat and attach it to the port system so that every beat, the handle would go up. And if I changed the BPM up and down, the cat would perfectly be in sync. And I thought, 'This is funny as hell. I should make a game.'"

Oberha5li Studios

But this wasn't just about noodling with the physics of a noodle-legged cat. Despite the hilarity of it all, Zimmerman realized early on that a floppy feline wasn't quite a game. So he brought in veteran programmer Cameron Rockey, who added multiplayer features, cosmetics and, perhaps most crucially, a sense of community.

"What are the little things we can add to build a community feel?" Rockey recalls asking. Under his direction, what began as a quirky, simplistic simulator quickly evolved into a more immersive, socially-driven experience.

One of the first things he did was replicate dance variables across players' cats so everyone could jam out together, even if they were listening to different tracks. "The cats in the nightclub are synchronized to your local music rather than us sharing the music," Rockey explains. "So you could be hanging out together, but doing something different at the same time."

Rockey, who has over two decades of dev experience, then layered in leaderboards and a "mau5head builder" that lets players assemble custom deadmau5 helmets using collectibles gathered around the map.

"We started adding more and more little features like that for the community to do and customize their experience within Meowingtons, but staying on-brand for deadmau5," he says.

Oberha5li Studios

While the co-founders' passion for game creation drives the project forward, its development process remains refreshingly unpretentious at its core. Behind the expanding features and growing fan involvement lies a partnership unburdened by corporate game development conventions—just two avid creators following their instincts.

"Don't get me wrong. I like to think I'm pretty talented, and I know Cameron's very talented with game design," Zimmerman says. "But we're just two dudes fucking around on Discord and making a game."

That's underselling it. After fetching an estimated $55 million through Create Music Group's acquisition of his timeless music catalog, he says he has big plans for Oberha5li Studios, which is shaping up to be much more than a passion project.

"We're at our first little thing and I anticipate growing this company over the next couple of years," Zimmerman says. "Maybe two years from now, I'll be 10 employees deep and we'll have a bigger, more AAA-looking title on the go. So the ambition is high."

Meowingtons Simulator is available now on Steam.

The electronic music community is constantly evolving with new sounds inspired by the scene of yesteryear. EDM.com's weekly Fresh Picks series discovers new music and unearths influential tracks that help define the underground dance scene.

You can find the below tracks on EDM.com's Fresh Picks Playlist. Follow to stay up-to-date and submit tracks for consideration here.

Atlantic Records has lifted the hood on F1: The Album, the forthcoming soundtrack to Apple Original Films' Formula 1 movie, and it’s a turbo-charged celebration of EDM's tightening grip on the motorsport world.

The genre has long flirted with Formula 1's flair for spectacle, but the relationship goes full-throttle with this soundtrack. Dom Dolla leads the charge with “No Room for A Saint," marking another milestone in his own F1 crossover journey following his headlining performance at LIV on the Grid during the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Other dance music producers on the soundtrack include Peggy Gou with her kinetic reimagining of "D.A.N.C.E"; Dutch icon Tiësto, who teamed up with Sexyy Red for the boisterous "OMG!"; and UK underground staple PAWSA, who was recently named by EDM.com as one of 2024's best electronic music producers.

While artists like Ed Sheeran, Tate McRae and Burna Boy round out the score's cross-genre appeal, it's the electronic contingent that underscores a cultural shift that’s been brewing for years. EDM and Formula 1 have been embracing a crossover crescendo in which headliners like Calvin Harris, Martin Garrix and Above & Beyond have become mainstays at Grand Prix weekends from Monaco to Miami.

The film is directed by Top Gun: Maverick's Joseph Kosinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer alongside seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton. Starring Brad Pitt, the film blends dramatic fiction with real F1 race footage and cameo appearances from motorsport titans like Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc.

Both F1: The Album and the feature film itself drop globally on June 27th. Check out the full tracklist and trailer below.

1. Don Toliver – Lose My Mind (feat. Doja Cat)
2. Dom Dolla – No Room for a Saint (feat. Nathan Nicholson)
3. Ed Sheeran – Drive
4. Tate McRae – Just Keep Watching
5. ROSÉ – Messy
6. Burna Boy – Don't Let Me Drown
7. Roddy Ricch – Underdog
8. RAYE – Grandma Calls The Boys Bad News
9. Chris Stapleton – Bad As I Used To Be
10. Myke Towers – Baja California
11. Tiësto & Sexyy Red – OMG!
12. Madison Beer – All At Once
13. Peggy Gou – D.A.N.C.E
14. PAWSA – Double C
15. Mr Eazi – Attention
16. Darkoo – Give Me Love

Galantis is set to bring a touch of folkloric terror to Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheatre with a Midsommar-themed concert, the DJ announced today.

Midsommar is a traditional Swedish festival celebrating the summer solstice by virtue of vibrant communal gatherings with maypole dancing, feasting and Scandinavian folk music. Often associated with pagan roots, it symbolizes renewal and community, though its depiction in Ari Aster's spine-chilling 2019 horror film of the same name casts a darker, fictionalized lens on the rituals.

Billed as "Midsommar: All Hallows," Galantis' upcoming show nods to Aster's daylight nightmare, which had viewers rethinking floral crowns and European vacations. Scheduled for November 1st, the one-night-only event promises to blend the Swedish EDM powerhouse's anthemic beats with eerie festival aesthetics—minus the bear carcasses and human sacrifices, we hope.

It's the latest in a series Galantis had traditionally presented at the Brooklyn Mirage, attracting over 40,000 fans at eight sold-out shows over the course of the last four years. He'll now head to Red Rocks, where the venue's towering monoliths and natural amphitheater setting will provide quite a backdrop for what he describes as "the crazy Midsommar spirit."

While he hasn't specified if attendees should wear white gowns or bring emotional baggage like Florence Pugh's character in the horror film, a press release promises a "dreamlike sensorial experience."

"This event means the world to me, I couldn't be happier to bring the crazy Midsommar spirit to one of the most iconic venues, Red Rocks," said Galantis, who also encouraged fans to rock their best costumes."'Midsommar: All Hallows' will be a night to remember."

The night will also feature DJ sets by Dillon Francis and Forester prior to Galantis. You can check out a teaser below and purchase tickets here.

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What more can we say about Breakaway Festival? The barnstorming brand, the nation's fastest-growing traveling music festival, has been unstoppable.

Organizers have now revealed their latest high-profile lineup. Breakaway, which in late-2024 was named by EDM.com as the year's top event organizer, is heading back to Charlotte this year for its Carolina edition and bringing along a slew of electronic heavy-hitters.

True to form, the Breakaway team brought the heat with the headliners. Dance music superstar John Summit tops the bill along with the Grammy-winning electronic music virtuoso Kaytranada as well as techno breakout Eli Brown and chart-topping duo Louis The Child.

The flyer's undercard is no less impressive, with a melting pot of house, indie-dance, bass music and more. Fans can catch performances by PEEKABOO, Disco Lines, Wuki, Jake Shore, me n ü, Surf Mesa and EDM.com Class of 2025 star Max Styler, among others.

Breakaway Carolina is scheduled to return to zMAX Dragway at Charlotte Motor Speedway from September 26-27. Tickets are on sale now, including two-day GA, VIP, Ultimate VIP and Space Deck passes as well as Space Deck tables.

You can check out the full 2025 lineup below.

Breakaway Music Festival

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Eli Brown has dropped a new single, "Wavey," a blistering techno weapon that serves as the official EDC Las Vegas 2025 anthem.

Out now via Insomniac Records, the 137 BPM track charges full-speed ahead into techno’s underbelly, powered by searing acid synths and Brown’s signature thunderous basslines.

"Wavey" perfectly encapsulates the energy of a producer who’s made his name by defying genre expectations and refusing to play by the rules. The track dials up the velocity with a bold and brazen vocal loop, pulling us in for a high-octane ride.

Coming off a long-awaited Coachella debut in April and a breakout 2024, Brown charges off the starting line and goes full-throttle, producing propulsive kickdrums that rarely relent. "Wavey" is fast and rebellious, a turbo-charged anthem that races into your mind and runs laps.

Brown is keeping his foot on the pedal, gearing up for high-profile performances at EDC Las Vegas, Beyond Wonderland, Elements and ARC Music Festival later this year. You can purchase passes to his tour here.

You can listen to "Wavey" below and find the new single on streaming platforms here.

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Mortgage payments and morning meetings have long been the sworn enemies of nightlife, until now, thanks to a new series of "30 Over Raves" in Austin.

The paradox of adulthood—yearning for the carefree nights of youth while treasuring your sleep schedule—finds its resolution May 31st in the Live Music Capital. If you're too old for the afters but too young to justify binging Netflix and frozen mochi on a Saturday night, the new series offers the perfect compromise: party like it's the 2010s golden era of EDM, but with the wisdom of a 401(k).

The event is the brainchild of Secret Disco Society, one of Austin's top electronic music event organizers. In perhaps the most revolutionary and shocking concept to hit rave culture, doors open at the dignified hour of 6pm and close at 9pm, catering to a generation caught between nostalgic FOMO and the genuine fear of functioning on five hours of sleep.

"The '30 Over Rave' was born from a desire to flip the script," Secret Disco founder Tanner Friesen tells EDM.com. "We've always tried to create unforgettable moments by thinking outside the box, whether that means choosing a nontraditional venue, flipping the timeframe or tapping into a different audience. This time, we asked: 'What if we threw a late-night-style rave… in the middle of the day… for the 30-plus crowd?'"

The soundtrack promises to transport attendees back to their EDM glory days, when Avicii was triggering spiritual dancefloor awakenings, Zedd's "Clarity" was healing the wounds of breakups, and you raved to Swedish House Mafia's "Don't You Worry Child" before having children. DJs will be spinning timeless tracks from those legends and more.

"Nostalgia was a huge driver," Friesen explains. "Secret Disco has been building community for over four years, and while we’ve welcomed an amazing new wave of young fans, a lot of our original audience has grown up with us. This was our chance to honor those OGs—people who lived through the golden era of EDM—and give them a space that feels both familiar and totally unexpected."

The next "30 Over Rave" is scheduled for May 31st at Austin's Vulcan Gas Company. Tickets are on sale now for $18.

Secret Disco Society

Whether it was electronic artists claiming the lion's share of the lineup or the countless individuals roaming Empire Polo Club with "sprouts" on their heads, the message in Indio this year was loud and clear: EDM and rave culture are reshaping Coachella.

As the merciless desert sun gradually lowered its bright yellow hues into the horizon, the iridescent structures within the fabled venue came alive as if through some sort of chromatic hypnosis. From the newly installed inflatable flower display to the iconic Ferris wheel, the expansive stages and art installations turned the festival into a nocturnal technicolor wonderland.

With darkened skies and thumping basslines emanating from multiple stages, the energy of the festival had palpably shifted, drawing parallels to the vibes found at beloved EDM fests like Tomorrowland and EDC.

Courtesy of Coachella

From its inception, dance music has always been a part of the sonically diverse landscape that is Coachella. Elements of rave culture were long relegated to the confines of the festival's beloved Yuma tent, the fan-favorite Do LaB or the storied Sahara stage. But rarely did those heart-pounding beats make it past the Ferris wheel. 

However, as the tentacles of rave culture continue to grip social media and the airwaves, the trailblazing festival had to adapt. After expanding its footprint in 2024 to include the stunning new Quasar stage, which was designed with extended DJ sets in mind, Coachella doubled down in 2025.

From 'Chella veterans to first-timers, we caught up with a handful of influential DJs in Indio to discuss how dance music is changing the landscape of this multi-genre festival.

For TOKiMONSTA, returning to the Empire Polo Club is like coming home. Having first performed at Coachella in 2011, the LA native has a strong connection to the legendary festival.

"One of the main things that's special about Coachella is that it's close to home," she tells EDM.com. "I'm from LA, so this is our festival. Regardless of the press or influencers, all of our friends get together here. It's always so well-curated and there's always something here for everyone."

After attending Weekend One as a fan, TOKiMONSTA was excited to return the following weekend and DJ at the DoLaB stage, where she first performed exactly a decade ago.

"The DoLaB stage is such a unique presence at this festival, and it's crazy to think that it was exactly 10 years ago when I first played there," she recalls.

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TOKiMOSTA's Coachella appearance came on the heels of the release of Eternal Reverie, a warm, scintillating album she describes as a rediscovery of self. After having to cancel a tour due to a family emergency, she's now poised to hit the road in mid-May, but not before allowing herself to enjoy the diverse soundscapes found at Coachella.

"I make music because I'm a fan of music, so it's nice to be a fan at this festival and see artists like Lady Gaga, who was incredible," TOKiMONSTA adds. "I'm not the type of person who will sit in the middle of the crowd—it gives me anxiety—but I was there in the pit watching. It was so captivating."

As a multi-genre producer herself, she touched on the importance of representation in a festival like Coachella.

"The magic of this festival is that you come here just to see where the winds take you. It's always about the random sets that you pass by, and you say, 'What is that sound?' and you find someone new."

As a Coachella first-timer, Massano represented the burgeoning melodic techno scene with a b2b set alongside Mind Against. The red-hot Liverpool producer, who recently released one of the year's best debut albums, had finally shaken off the jet-lag from Weekend One and was excited for round two inside the Yuma.

"I'm excited to be playing alongside Mind Against and I'm kind of getting used to it now that I've played Weekend One," Massano said. "Since we're going to have the livestream for Weekend Two, there's going to be some stuff we wanna show off that will be different."

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The impression that melodic techno has made on American audiences is not lost on Massano, who grew up listening to legendary bands like The Prodigy and Faithless before being influenced by the sounds of CamelPhat and ARTBAT. He's now a vital contributor to the genre's recent surge in stateside popularity, especially after being selected as one of the lucky few to open for Anyma during the Italian techno superstar's groundbreaking Las Vegas Sphere residency, a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" for which he feels immense gratitude.

"It's exciting," Massano says of melodic techno's rising prominence. "It's obviously been a crazy time the last three to four years in terms of everyone coming up in the scene. It's nice to see the hype come up from the likes of Afterlife and Tale of Us, and now I think everyone's starting to carve their own paths and people are developing their own sounds."

After his second stint inside the Yuma, Massano said he planned to be one with the people and walk around Coachella in hopes of catching sets by Travis Scott and Keinemusik.

As a member of Blood Oath, the trio of femme fatales who took over the DoLaB during Weekend One, techno superstar Indira Paganotto was already in high spirits when discussing the experience of the festival's second weekend.

"The Yuma stage is so special," she gushes. "I'm a really big fan of the chill vibes, the underground hypnotic vibes. You see the people smiling with their eyes closed, and you can see they are traveling in outer space. I think Yuma was the perfect beginning in our mission."

That mission? The EDM.com Class of 2023 alum plays her cards close to her chest, only expressing that she was part of a global phenomenon that includes fellow techno superstar Sara Landry, who had been named to the following year's Class.

"My sister Sara Landry is the pioneer of hard techno, and I love that," Paganotto says. "She's kind of like Mulan from Disney. We are women who don't care, and we seek the truth and we follow."

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Opening up about her love of psytrance, Paganotto characterized the genre as poetic and romantic. "Psy has these beautiful Indian and ancestral sounds that are slowly getting to America. I think in a few years they will understand completely," she said.

Born and raised in Spain, she was thousands of miles away from the Goan shores where psytrance originated. When asked how she was introduced to the genre, she pointed to her father, who was a traveling doctor and spent time in India healing disadvantaged youth.

"My mom was an Italian super romantic listening to opera while my father was the hippie in the family," she continued. "He was a doctor without borders and was helping people in Asia, where he was introduced to the parties in Goa. Since it was the hippie movement, I think I may have a lot of brothers and sisters that I don't know about, if you know what I'm saying."

However, Paganotto, whose latest album is set to be released later this year, hopes she doesn't get pigeonholed strictly as a techno or psytrance artist. 

"I'm not part of the techno scene, and I'm not part of psy. I'm just an artist," she affirms. "I love to cook, I love animals, I love people and I love music. And this is just the beginning."

As they prepared for their second Coachella performance together, Pete Tong and Ahmed Spins came into the desert with two distinct perspectives. For Tong, the desert is a familiar landscape, having been a part of the festival since the early 2000s.

"I was lucky to be here the second or third year, and I've watched it grow," Tong told us. "I know the crew and I'm very proud of the effort they put into the build, every year it changes. After Quasar came aboard last year, it's evolved again this year, and the Sahara seems to get bigger and bigger, and it keeps moving around. That's what keeps it interesting."

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And then there's Spins, whose b2b sets with Tong mark the first time he's ever walked the grounds of the Empire Polo Club. Their performance inside the Yuma could be seen as a sort of passing of the torch from a veteran 'Chella performer to a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first-timer.

"It's my first time here, and it's been awesome. I have friends and family here with me and we walked around and took it in," Spins said, calling Tong a "legend" with whom it's an honor to DJ.

As for the trailblazing Tong, he's now gearing up for yet another musical venture later this year.

"I'm actually starting another label called Places in Spaces, which will focus more on my music," he said. "That will start rolling out in the summer."

After a five-year hiatus following his acclaimed debut album, Duke Dumont has announced his highly anticipated sophomore project, Union, set for release on July 25th via EMI Records. The announcement comes alongside his first single of 2025, "Your Loving."

The new album builds upon the creative foundation established in 2020's Duality, expanding the influential "I Got U" producer's sonic palette through a thoughtful fusion of deep house rhythms and classic dance influences. Union represents an evolution in his artistic vision through music that "celebrates connection, freedom and unity on the dancefloor," according to a press release.

"I've come to realize there aren't many things in life that bring people together on one level," he said. "My album Union is a homage to this unique experience. The entire essence of the album is channeled to create that feeling."

Rather than catering to streaming algorithms or radio formats, Dumont said he designed the album as a complete journey meant to be experienced from start to finish, particularly in live settings. "[Union] was not made to appease playlists or radio," he explained. "It's intended to take the listener on a journey, not provide a quick fix."

The rollout begins with today's release of Dumont's radiant single, "Your Loving," one of 12 tracks to appear on Union. The album will feature just two collaborations: "Ain’t Giving Up" (with Clementine Douglas) and "All My Life" (with Panama).

You can pre-save Union here and listen to "Your Loving" below.

1. Union
2. The Chant
3. Prelude #1
4. I Need You Now
5. Feels Like This
6. ENERGY
7. Hit Em
8. My Heart (Is Full Of Love)
9. Prelude #2
10. Your Loving
11. Ain’t Giving Up (feat. Clementine Douglas)
12. All My Life (feat. Panama)

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