@Susie Rees

Inside electronic music's myriad scenes and subcultures, bass music occupies a world all its own—it's as much a physical experience as an aural one. Its low-end wobbles draw on some of dance music's most interesting rhythms—grime, dubstep, trap, drum 'n' bass, and UK garage are a few—with DJ/producers carving out deeper, more experimental sounds to accent their woofer-flexing drops. This playlist has some of the gnarliest tracks rumbling through Reddit threads and dance tents, and it's updated weekly with the latest cuts. If you hear a tune you like, add it to your library.

Here’s where you’ll find the best dance tracks making the rounds online. Just like your feed, this playlist is constantly being updated—if you hear a song you like, add it to your library.

Big beat—an expression of ’90s dance music at its most crowd-pleasingly boisterous—was always upfront about its intentions. Its philosophy was right there in the name: The bigger the beats, the better. Coldcut and M/A/R/R/S lay the foundation in the late ’80s, fusing acid house and turntablism with infectious hooks. By the mid ’90s, at club nights around the UK, DJs like Fatboy Slim and The Chemical Brothers were bringing ravers and rockers together under the umbrella of the eclectic new sound. Big Beat’s early incarnation joined hip-hop breaks, rock guitars, and attention-grabbing vocals with a distinctly gonzo sensibility that helped entice American fans previously immune to electronic music’s allure. Long past the style’s chart-topping late-’90s heyday, its super-sized sonics helped pave the way for DFA’s dance/rock crossovers, French electro, and the ’10s EDM boom. Just like the Big Bang’s gravitational waves, ripples from big beat’s collision of rave, rap, rock, and pop keep spreading outward.

Get ready for a season you’ll never forget. Ibiza’s clubs are opening, and we’ve got the soundtrack to every sunset, every night that will live forever, and every euphoric moment the White Isle has to offer. These, our editors predict, are the tracks set to blow up as Ibiza 2025 kicks off. If you hear or recognize something you love, add it to your library—we’ll be updating the playlist as the season heats up.

Pride may look a little different this year, but it won’t stop the world celebrating queer communities and their stories. And this euphoric playlist is designed to get those celebrations jumping. We’ll enjoy these tracks responsibly right now, and look be looking forward to hearing them in their rightful setting very soon: pumped at full volume at Pride parades across the globe.

Isgubhu, a Zulu word meaning “beat,” celebrates an evergreen and ever-growing set of dance and electronic genres and subgenres sweeping the continent, from amapiano, gqom, Afro-house, kwaito, Shangaan electro, and more. This week, the playlist features the curation of SPINALL, the Afrobeats powerhouse fresh off the release of his own ultra-collaborative <i>ÈKÓ GROOVE</i> album. With his curation of Isgubhu, SPINALL highlights other “meetings of the minds” like “2 Step” from Shimza, Kabza De Small, and Dj Vitoto, “Kude” from Heavy-K and Ntando Yamahlubi, and “uValo” from Jazzworx, Thukuthela, and Babalwa M. He also includes <i>ÈKÓ GROOVE</i>’s “EARLY,” a song, he says was made for more intimate moments than the ones you might find on a dance floor. “‘EARLY’ is quite sexual,” SPINALL says. “We’re talking about some grown folks’ business, about what we like to do early in the morning. The beat was produced by Blaise, who brought light into the world with this one. We made ‘EARLY’ about six months ago, but we went back, worked on it, moved things around, and the song is sounding crazy. This is one of the records I can’t wait for people to listen to.” Listen to SPINALL’s selections on Isgubhu now, and if you hear something you like, add it to your library.

Perhaps the biggest DJ in the world, Calvin Harris has been making waves across the globe in recent years with his seemingly endless list of floor-filling hits. What you may not know is that the Scottish artist has also been behind the desk for countless high-profile artists. With hits from Rihanna, Scissor Sisters, Kylie Minogue, and more, this collection allows you to get to know the man behind the mixing desk.

Throughout 2020’s lockdown, dance music DJs and producers have had to think outside the booth: What might their fans want to hear when they can’t sweat it out under a disco ball? While underground club music largely moved online, drawing fans to digital festivals and livestreams for a good cause, the mainstream was dominated by nostalgic cuts that pined for rave culture’s heyday—the early ’90s. And Calvin Harris’ Love Regenerator side project—which delivered vintage-sounding releases such as the exemplary “Live Without Your Love” with Steve Lacy—made it clear that the ’90s were having a moment. Spiraling synthesizers, progressive builds, piano rhythms, and acid breaks replaced the bright-eyed dance pop of recent years. Harris wasn’t alone. Duke Dumont, Prospa, and Eli Brown also looked back for inspiration, with transportive, ecstatic dance cuts that drew from soul and disco. In other corners of the virtual club, melodic deep house still held strong; Paul Woolford, Diplo, and Kareen Lomax’s “Looking for Me” drew instant comparisons to a club Tracy Chapman, and SIDEPIECE’s groovy “On My Mind” went viral on TikTok. But of all the moody bangers that soundtracked 2020, none was as inescapable as Joel Corry and MNEK’s “Head & Heart,” an impossibly catchy banger-lite that had us—and everyone—humming “ba-ba-ba-dum” all year long. Revisit 2020’s biggest dance tracks right here.

From his early days playing Chicago house in French discotheques to his long reign atop the pop charts, David Guetta has revolutionized dance music multiple times. By the early 2000s, he had translated French touch into a clever merger of pop sass and club swagger. Along with a knack for killer hooks, Guetta’s versatility would become one of his principal calling cards. As EDM exploded across pop culture at the end of the 2000s, his shape-shifting style led the way, yielding ecstatic affirmations (“When Love Takes Over,” featuring Kelly Rowland), feisty come-ons (“Sexy Bitch,” guest-starring Akon), and unstoppable sing-alongs (Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling,” which he co-produced). Since then, his collaborations with the likes of Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, and Justin Bieber have kept listeners guessing even as his choruses—as triumphant as a bottle of bubbly blowing its top—have proven one of pop’s most dependable pleasures.