7 new dance albums we can’t wait to hear in the club

I've been thinking about a quote from our recent Q&A with Argentine perreo-rave artist Six Sex, who said the best advice she's ever gotten was to take care of herself as her own daughter. I can tell you her inner child and mine have one important thing in common: we need to go to the club and let loose on the dance floor. No matter how exorbitant drink prices get, it's still cheaper than therapy.

We hear a ton of good music here at The FADER every month, but nothing beats dancing to a great tune with your fellow humans. Lately, I've been really into the house music of Daphni and 박혜진 Park Hye Jin, Carré's post-dub, 2charm's fuzzy Eurodance, Crespi Drum Syndicate's clave-inspired juggernauts, and footwork by Nondi as well as username and Marsh Crane.

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The cloudy electronica of South Korean DJ and producer Park Hye Jin marries vaporwave chords to trap beats and then layers her own chanted vocals on top. Accordingly, So Much Have Fun sounds sort of like if Uffie got really into 2014-era Awful Records, filled with simple refrains and gossamer synths. I’m especially taken by her use of low-pass filters and reverb to make her vocals and instrumentals sound as if they were being played off a fuzzy radio on the other side of the room. So Much Have Fun has some serious thumpers too, from the synthpop bounce of “I Fucked up so Many Times” to the wobbly title track “Back in London(Somuchhavefun).”

Standout tracks: “See so (I Can Hear Your Heart),” “Yeh Yeh Yeh Yeh,” “I’m Sad but Not Crying”

Though Nondi_’s electronic music sensibility was cultivated entirely online, her physical geography informs her footwork music just as much as any digital community. In interviews around 2023’s Flood City Trax, she described her hometown Johnstown, PA, as a “folk punk city,” and her music lives up to the anti-establishment ethos of those genres. It’s just that Nondi_’s personal folktales involve Pokemon: Pearl and Moodyman. Her self-titled latest Nondi… draws on ambient and vaporwave, moving between gauzy set-pieces and gloopy percussive suites. These tracks would sound incredible bludgeoning your eardrums on big speakers, enhancing a couchlocked K-hole off a JBL, or simply in your earbuds, scoring a locked-in workday or Wikipedia rabbit hole.

Standout tracks: “I Version Melody,” “I’m Fading Shifts Into Leather Shadows,” “Unrendered Location”

Long-time readers of The FADER will best know Dan Snaith for his work as Caribou, but don’t overlook his dancefloor alchemy as Daphni. 2022’s Cherry was a potent, timeless collection of house tracks; its arpeggiated synths and ivories cascaded through my synapses for weeks after listening. Poppier follow-up Butterfly still indulges in that tried-and-true “Sad Piano House,” but seems to play to a wider audience. This album is filled with hands-in-the-air rave tunes and is padded out with niche IDM plays to keep more introspective heads bobbing along. But it still retains an idiosyncratic charm reflective of Snaith’s eclecticism as a DJ and sampler.

Standout tracks: “Napoleon’s Rock,” “Two Maps,” “Caterpillar”

The sinewy juggernauts of Colada Talk sprout from a seed of Latin clave rhythms. And as you might guess from their name, Miami duo Crespi Drum Syndicate (that's Pablo Arrangoiz and Jonathan Trujillo) are unrelenting when it comes to kicks and snares. Their syncopated sophomore effort is a little spare and slightly ominous, like walking through a nighttime swamp armed only with just your phone flashlight. But that more minimal approach allows individual tracks to shine in the mix, and emphasizes the discordant — though never off-putting — elements in their songs. It’s the rare electronic album that would probably sound just as good reinterpreted for MTV Unplugged or a live band jam session.

Standout tracks: “Fletcha,” “Loko,” “Siu (feat. AceMo)”

username is a footwork producer out of Vancouver who uses his rhythmic chops to reconfigure an insane breadth of samples. I don’t just mean “music from multiple genres,” but bits of sound scraped up from Tiktok memes and beyond. On this joint tape with frequent collaborator Marsh Crane, the duo mutate bits of Lil Uzi Vert, G Herbo, and Millie B (“OT”) into deep-fried Cronenbergian monsters. These tracks are playful above all, but there are eerie, even sinister sounds at the edges of the frame: a song like “TRIPLE CROSS” isn’t very far from the minor-key ambience of Chuckyy or Skrilla. But OVERTIME is equally satisfying when Crane and username tilt towards moodier, more self-reflective modes, as on “NOT ONE OF THEM,” even if the atmosphere is inevitably punctured by sampled sirens and unpredictable snare stabs.

Standout tracks: “THAT’S IT,” “TRIPLE CROSS (w/ auntie),” “SPEAKERS”

This 4-track from West Coast producer Carré is post-dubstep in the British, rather than Californian, sense of the genre. Though she’s also behind the LA rave series Fast At Work, Hibiscus seems better suited for coming down than lockjawed head banging, cloaked in wispy synths and undulating baselines. And on the EP’s title track, she taps IYKYK local fav Bbyafricka for a collab that’s even groovier than the sum of its parts.

Standout tracks: “X Effect,” “Hibiscus (feat. Bbyafricka)”

Though they self-describe as “gooner pop,” Melbourne duo 2charm are a lot sweeter than that salty phrase might imply. OK yes, they’re still wickedly horny — like, coaxing-a-paramour-into-infidelity level horny — but star scum city holds more starlight than scuzzy behavior. The duo just went on tour opening for Ninajirachi; our recent GEN F star was behind the boards for breakout “boyfriend” and one of my favorite beats on the record “chateau” (Troye Sivan co-wrote on the latter). But when you hear a tender song like “prerogative” or an undeniable strobelight banger like “arc de triomphe,” it’s clear 2charm shine bright all on their own.

Standout tracks: “arc de triomphe,” “prerogative,” “Paris (to get you out of my head)”