How many times have you been to an exhibit where you've crept up close to a breathtaking work of art, only to be yelled out for standing too close? How many times have you been excited to check out a live show, but the performer is barely visible from your spot at the back of the crowd? Enter Meow Wolf, an experimental, experiential art collective making headlines for their trippy avant-garde-art-meets-funhouse-meets-kids-museum space in Santa Fe, N.M.

In 2016, Meow Wolf opened this ultra-exploratory venue featuring art you can touch from rotating collabs with multi-media artists, the House of Eternal Return. It is their first permanent space, thanks to funding from the one and only from George R.R. Martin, the creator of Game of Thrones. Fast forward to two years later, and the growing crew has launched the Taos Vortex music festival, incorporating their love for interactive art and community spaces with their eclectic taste in music.

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Now, in 2019, they are preparing for a second year of the fest in Taos, N.M., running from Aug. 16–18, along with getting ready to open new permanent spaces in Las Vegas, Denver and Washington D.C. in the subsequent years. Vince Kadlubek, Co-Founder and CEO, Sofie Cruse, Art Director for Events, and Max Beck-Keller, Events Director, treated the Recording Academy to a phone conversation about what they were most excited about for the second Taos Vortex, why they strongly believe in integrating music and art in interactive spaces (because music is art, right?), what's up next for Meow Wolf and more.

So, the second edition of Taos Vortex is coming up soon. What do you guys most looking forward to about the festival's sophomore year?

Vince Kadlubek: I'm looking forward to the experience as a whole. All of the elements coming together; the music, the art, the performers. And then getting there, being there with all of the people and all of the contribution the Vortex inhabitants are bringing.

Sofie Cruse: I would definitely agree, in that this year it's highly collaborative and having all of these different elements come together and sing together is going to be something that we're all really looking forward to.

Max Beck-Keller: Vortex the vibe, Vortex the harmonic frequency.

Cruse: Completely. It's harmonizing all of the experiences together into something that feels cohesive. And also that you can't even get a snapshot of a moment of it because there's just so much.

It sounds so all-immersive. And the musical lineup is really top notch, yet super eclectic. What was your main vision going into booking the artists?

Beck-Keller: Meow Wolf is eclectic, it's maximal, it's stacked. New Mexico is eclectic, there's a lot of different people here. It was really important to have a lineup that is as diverse and eclectic and happening as Meow Wolf and the place that we live in.

Kadlubek: I think the artists who are all coming there, they're fun. And we see the best success with artists who come and play our venue when there's this commonality and there's a synergy between us and the artists. I think that's what the programming is all about, trying to create that artistic synergy that Sofie said, trying to create that harmony in the experience.

Cruse: You did a great job.

Kadlubek: Thanks.

Can you speak to a specific artist that you feel Meow Wolf is really synergistic with? We're you're like, "we have to work with this person"?

Kadlubek: There's a lot of the artists who are playing this year we have a relationship with, perhaps they've played at Meow Wolf in past years. I think Empress Of is an artist like that. She's playful, there's intensity; there's a certain unexpectedness with what she does. And she's fun. Also, we go back, personally and culturally, with CocoRosie, and aesthetically. Also, from a community perspective, they're someone who not only just represents Meow Wolf, but we actually feel like we're of the same fabric.

Beck-Keller: Totally. CocoRosie has a strong relationship with Taos. Their friends are good friends of ours. Like Vince says, it's that fabric.

Cruse: CocoRosie has been one of my favorite musical groups for forever and seeing the integration of what we're naturally doing and what they do and how those two things shake each other's hand, it's a nice thing to be able to look at.

I love that, all of the universes aligning. Looking at the whole offering of Taos Vortex, in addition to the music, there's a lot of other things to get excited about, to get lost in. What is your biggest hope that an attendee of Taos Vortex might get out of the experience?

Kadlubek: I want people to leave feeling inspired. I think as artists and makers you want to create new worlds. And I think we want people to come to Vortex and see a world that relates to their world and inspires them and makes them want to be creative in their own life.

Cruse: Piggybacking off of that, I think a lot of people go to experiences like this to be transformed, to have something that changes them a little bit. And through what we've been trying to curate and bring together, opportunities and invitations for people to not only come out transformed, but to be supported in that. This is going to be very community-based, world-based.

I think all of you mentioned the collaborative element of the festival this year. Could you speak to that a little bit and the different pieces or maybe the different players that led to it all coming together?

Cruse: Creating an environment that changes your locomotion, in an outdoor setting. The installations that we're providing this year are not only going to encourage movement from people but encourage different movements. I think that by getting people outside of normal party expectations and giving them an environment that has less rules but more to engage with, it's a huge thing. So, the impetus to get people excited and then kind of run with it themselves.

Kadlubek: We do this at the House of Eternal Return, too. We want to provide a really nice environment and want people to feel like they can explore and discover and utilize and create within it, however they want to. It starts with people and the community to dig the vibes of the environment first, then music's the byproduct of that and the art and the sculpture is a byproduct of that. And then food is too. We try to have our festival be something that's anchored by the people in the community and the environment first. Then everything else derives from that, like a really cool park.

Why do you believe it's important to enhance a standard music festival experience and integrate art play and creativity into it?

Beck-Keller: I think art and music has to be an experience. It's not a consumer activity. Meow Wolf doesn't make art that's on a wall in a gallery or in a museum to be looked at and not touched. And I think all art is like that; you want to play with it, you want to experiment.

Cruse: I think it's what people want too, people want to have this experience about the music and the space that they're in, something that's less formulaic in a way. [They want] to be able to interact with it and change, to feel the place and the connectivity.

Beck-Keller: We don't want to create observer moments. We want people to live in their experience.

Kadlubek: Although it's important to bring art, creativity, vibes and community into the centerpiece of the festival experience, I think that's because festivals that are based on music alone, a big crowd and big names, has been done and it's predictable. What's fun about bringing in art, imagination and participation is that it's harder to predict those variables. You're not quite sure what the festival will be, who you might meet, what you might do, how you might contribute to it, what rabbit holes you might go down. And I think that unpredictability is what people really want.

It's the type of thing that Burning Man is the best at. They don't have headliners, they don't have schedules. It's still very much an environment for you to explore, for you to find whoever it is you want to find. It's the best model. So it's just trying to tap into that ethos. I also think an important part of is that festival culture has evolved.

There's new values that need to be brought to the table and new ways of interacting with people. There's new things to consider important and new priorities that need to be brought in to the fold of festival culture, and it takes producers, programmers and event promoters to be the leaders when setting new values for communal experiences. And so that's largely where we are coming from as well. We want to be part of a movement of festivals and music shows and that helps define a new way for people to come to interact with each other.

Cruse: I think that Vortex is giving us the vessel to be able to play with that in a really intense way. To change the model and be able to give people this "show me, don't tell me" experience. The culture is rapidly changing in awareness over how people wish to choose their nighttime when they have it; you want to make sure that it's different and wild and weird.

In my mind there's kind of two camps of thought for the festival experience, with one end being "let's have a completely brand-owned experience."

Kadlubek: Yeah, totally.

And then there's the Burning Man end of it, where everyone there has to participate and contribute to have fun. It's cool to see that happening in a music festival design.

Beck-Keller: Yeah, we're trying to find somewhere in between those, definitely towards the Burning Man side. I think how we're doing it is with our Meow Wolf platform is inspiring experiences that we resonate with. Like DoLaB [who throws Lightning in a Bottle fest] and Symbiosis [a roaming-home festival], Meow Wolf has their own vibe. There are festival promoters out there who are absolutely thinking about how people come together in a way that promotes social change and new ways of communicating. And that is taking off and we're doing it. But I think what Meow Wolf does is that we also add in an element of accessibility and party and just fun. "Fun" is a really important verb for us.

Cruse: I want to throw the kind of parties that I want to go to. We also have put in the homework to decide that there are a lot of different ways to do this but we seem to have found a way that is really appealing to a bunch of different kinds of people, that I think are craving something new and a little weirder.

Kadlubek: And I want Vortex to be a place where people in their sixties want to go and feel comfortable. That's a goal for us. I want Vortex to be something that a family who have 12-year-olds who come into the party during the day and it feels like the House of Eternal Return in that the same sort of feeling of inclusivity for people who normally wouldn't feel comfortable at a festival.

Beck-Keller: Absolutely. Creating art and experiences for people and not having some kind of vibe that people feel alienated as though they're not cool or weird enough that they can't come.

Looking at the House of Eternal Return, as you all mentioned, you've had some pretty amazing acts come through there. Why was important to bring live music into that space?

Beck-Keller: Music has always been part of Meow Wolf, so it make sense to bring it into our program. It also creates another opportunity to explore the space.

Kadlubek: It's funny because 13 years ago when we started, the reason we rented the very first warehouse was to throw music shows at an art exhibition. What turned into our first art exhibition was really the decoration of the venue. So that's our genesis point.

What's amazing about music is that as long as you're booking really great acts, you will always remain relevant. Whereas if you're a fashion or visual brand, you're susceptible to being off trend. Think about a successful festival like a Coachella; they've been around 25 years or so and still is super relevant, super beloved.

That's the thing, music is the beating heart of culture. It drives right into what is relevant today in the world of culture. Not to spend too much time bashing on the fine art world, but that's where you can start to really drift off into some strange abstract, disconnected places. Culturally, it's when you stopped aligning yourself with that beating heart of music.

What has been your favorite show at Meow Wolf so far? I know it's probably impossible to pick.

Kadlubek: Oh my gosh. [Pauses.] I think when we first saw CocoRosie play there.

Cruse: Oh my god.

Kadlubek: Yeah, that was like a holy sh*t moment, that was absolute.

Cruse: That was one of my favorite in the venue. Because of the size of our venue and the amount of hype that there was for CocoRosie's show, it was one of the best, most energetic times I've had at Meow Wolf. Really, really fun. Jonathan Richmond was another one that was just a mind blowing lifetime experience and getting to see it in what is our home, essentially, was very special.

Kadlubek: Justin Martin's played a bunch of times. I went to one of those parties and it was probably the best show that I had been to. It seems like consistently his Meow Wolf residency was just really special for us.

Beck-Keller: Justin Martin is so influential for us. I've been to every single one of his parties but one, when I was out of town. And then shows like Kevin Morby playing on a Sunday night absolutely blew my mind.

This all sounds so fun. What is the capacity for the space as a music venue?

Beck-Keller: It's 400 for live music and 500 for parties because when we have a party we know that people hang out in the exhibit too.

Wow, that's a super intimate space.

Beck-Keller: Yeah, it's our tiny baby.

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Music was, is, and will always be part of our lifeblood at Meow Wolf.⠀ Huge credit to the entire Meow Wolf Events team here in Santa Fe, and to the entire operating staff that maintains this phenomenon. The work that you all put into this venue is LITERALLY changing our city and state for the better. Come out y’all, check the venue, get to a show! Photo Credits: ⠀ 1. Evan &amp; Zane by @katerussellphoto | 2. Shakey Graves by @katerussellphoto | 3. Itchy-O by @katerussellphoto | 4. Tokimonsta by @brandonsoder | 5. Taos Vortex by @jessbernsteinphotography | 6. Dan Deacon by @katerussellphoto | 7. Tinariwen by @katerussellphoto | 8. Mountain Goats by @katerussellphoto | 9. Poppy by @katerussellphoto | 10. Justin Martin by @sidesquash</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/meow__wolf/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Meow Wolf</a> (@meow__wolf) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2018-12-30T18:41:55+00:00">Dec 30, 2018 at 10:41am PST</time></p></div></blockquote><script async src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>

I was talking to someone recently who told me that shortly after Woodstock, Bill Graham closed both Fillmore East and West [iconic concert halls he ran from 1968-1971 in N.Y.C and S.F.] because he realized he and the artists could make a lot more money with bigger venues. So, the early 70s were a turning point for bigger shows. But there's just something special about seeing your favorite artist in a small space.

Beck-Keller: Totally. I think it goes back to the importance of being part of the experience and not being an observer. An intimate room gives you that, you're right there, up close. Justin Martin always invites people onto the stage to dance right there in the DJ booth with him. We welcome it as a venue. We worked really hard to make sure it's safe for everyone to dance on the stage and on the speakers and all our subwoofers.

Music has a powerful effect on most people, especially when you can either connect with the artists who makes the music that you cry to or just be around other people that are also crying to the same music. I think that's an important thing that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of big venues and events.

Kadlubek: Also, we're coming at it from a perspective of "let's party." Let's party, but let's be safe. Let's have be respectful to ourselves and others. Everybody can party responsibly; we welcome all into this party. That's kind of the message that Meow Wolf has had for a while. That still translates into our venue as they can let loose.

Cruse: Totally. We are not in the business of having a bad time. It is my personal mantra. We want people, when they choose to have a nice time, to choose to have it with us. And we do focus on individuality so much that it's really hard to be embarrassed at our parties, which I think is something that sometimes an outsider-feeling person can have, but it's just not seen as rampantly at our parties.

I think that's so important. Here's another hard question. What is the biggest thing you feel like you've learned so far from working with Meow Wolf?

Cruse: Learning and learning and learning. Max and I say that to each other almost every day.

Beck-Keller: Yeah, I think coming from DIY culture, it really has been about that. We set the bar high for ourselves and teach ourselves how to get there.

Cruse: Being overly ambitious is a good thing for us because it puts us in situations where we have to figure it out. With events there are hard deadlines; you either make it work or pivot. I think that's been a huge thing to learn; we always say that our events team is scrappy because most of the time we are trying to make everything work even if it isn't something that we necessarily know how to do.

What does the future of art and music look like to you?

Kadlubek: I think about this from the production world. Sometimes in putting on shows, you may want to rely on a formula and do something in a rote way because that's what you know and that's what you see. I don't know what the future looks like, but I definitely know that it's about getting outside of the box and not doing things that are rote and opening up new collaborations between venues and artists and event producers and installation artists and really exploring the edge no matter what that edge is.

Beck-Keller: I'm going to sound pretty futurist here, but in the future art and music—and really events—is going to be based on the fact that people will be able to experience each other without being in the same space. So having the ability to think about events, music and art from the vantage point of attendees coming in from anywhere in the world. Coachella's realized this with regards to the live stream; that audience is actually bigger than their in person attendance. There's been some issues with that; how much attention is given to the live stream versus the people who bought tickets to be there. But it goes beyond even just live streaming video.

It's all the way of how do you build venues and experiences that anyone in the world can log into and can feel the community, experience what it's like to be at a Meow Wolf venue. For me, the goal is how do we integrate and build an even larger culture or subculture of like-minded people who want to have fun and be expressive and want to share an imagination with each other without actual physical space being a limitation.

Cruse: I see the world of art and music changing so much, just by the nature of materials that we are using today and how they're continuing to be developed. whether that may be something that is tangible, I think that the non-tangible ways of creating and sharing, what Vince is touching on, is going to be a really interesting way of how we show each other the things that we're trying to say. I think it's what art is, trying to communicate.

What's next for Meow Wolf? I know you have some new cities opening on the horizon.

Beck-Keller: One of the next things that Sofie and I are developing is a new party that follows after the Vortex summertime narrative, and goes into the winter, called Dark Palace. We're going to announce that pretty soon.

Ooh, is it another festival?

Beck-Keller: Yeah, but it's not like a camping thing like at Vortex. It's a cold-weather, indoor thing. For all those freaks that don't like the sun but still want to enjoy music.

And what about the other magical playhouses around the U.S.?

Kadlubek: So we're going to open Vegas, I'll say a year from now. It's going to be about three times the size of the Santa Fe experience and it's a whole new concept. Its part of a really large development called Area 15, which is going to be a really sweet new type of cultural experience.

And then a year after that, we open Denver, so we have two major projects right now that are in production and one project that's in development, which is in Washington, D.C. There's a lot happening for us. Everything that we're doing has music attached to it, with more music venues. We are really trying to expand what has happened in Santa Fe and what people have fallen in love with there and take it to a level that can accommodate big cities and larger populations, but still maintaining the same vibe and character.

When I first heard of the Sin City joint I thought, "Meow Wolf in Vegas, what?" Which quickly shifted to "Wait, this is exactly what is needed there," exactly like you were saying, like a different experience.

Kadlubek: Yeah. So one of our friends and one of our favorite venue operators, event producers in the world is House of Yes [in Brooklyn]. The owners of House of Yes, when we were thinking about Vegas, at first the reaction was, "What? Vegas?" And then they said, "Actually, every time we go to Vegas, we're like, 'Why the f*** are we here? What is there to do here that's even fun?'" That's the exact crowd that we're trying to speak to, all the people who end up in Vegas, wondering sort of like, "Okay, now what?"

Why Can't Anyone Get Woodstock Right? 15 Of The Original Fest's Performers Weigh In

Curtis Jones is a dance music legend, whose multiple monikers only begin to demonstrate his deep and varied influence in the genre.

Jones has been active as a producer and DJ for decades, and is among a cadre of dance music acts forging a connection between the genre's origins and its modern iterations. Crucially, he  joined Chicago house legends Honey Dijon and Terry Hunter on Beyoncé's house-infused RENAISSANCE, providing a sample for "Cozy." He’s also produced tracks with house favorites Chris Lake and Oliver Heldens, and DJed with Dom Dolla and John Summit.

Jones contributed to the aforementioned collaborations, young and old, as Green Velvet. He’s been releasing dance hits like "Flash" and "Answering Machine" under that name since the mid- '90s. He is also currently a staple of the live circuit, his signature green mohawk vibing in clubs and festivals around the globe — including at his own La La Land parties in Los Angeles, Denver, Orlando, and elsewhere.

Green Velvet is appropriately braggadocious, even releasing the popular "Bigger Than Prince" in 2013. But by the time Jones had released the heavy-grooving tech house track, his artistry had been percolating for decades as Cajmere.

Where Green Velvet releases lean into acid house and Detroit techno, Cajmere is all about the traditional house sound of Jones’ hometown of Chicago. When Jones first debuted Cajmere in 1991, Chicago’s now-historic reputation for house music was still developing. Decades after the original release, Cajmere tracks like "Percolator,” have sustained the Windy City sound via remixes by prominent house artists like Will Clarke, Jamie Jones, and Claude VonStroke.

"I love doing music under both of my aliases, so it’s great when fans discover the truth,” Jones tells GRAMMY.com over email. Often, Jones performs as Cajmere to open his La La Land parties, and closes as Green Velvet. 

But beyond a few scattered performances and new tracks, Cajmere has remained dormant while Green Velvet became a worldwide headliner, topping bills in Mexico City, Toronto, Bogotá and other international dance destinations. He’s only shared two original releases as Cajmere since 2016: "Baby Talk,” and "Love Foundation,” a co-production with fellow veteran Chicago producer/DJ Gene Farris.

This year, Jones is reviving Cajmere to headliner status with his new live event series, Legends. First held in March in Miami, Jones' Legends aims to highlight other dance music legends, from Detroit techno pioneers Stacey Pullen and Carl Craig, to Chicago house maven Marshall Jefferson. 

"My intention is to shine a light on those who sacrificed so much to keep house music alive," Jones writes. "The sad reality is that most of the legendary artists aren’t celebrated or compensated as well as they should be."

Given that dance music came into the popular music zeitgeist relatively recently, the originators of the genre — like the artists Jones booked for his Legends party — are still in their prime. Giving them space to perform allows them to apply the same innovation they had in the early '90s in 2024.

Jones says the Miami Legends launch was an amazing success."Seeing the passion everyone, young and old, displayed was so inspiring."

Curtis Jones, center, DJs at the Miami Legends party ┃Courtesy of the artist

The first Legends party also served as a celebration of Cajual Records, the label Jones launched in 1992 as a home for his Cajmere music. Over the past three decades, Cajual has also released tracks from dance music veterans such as Riva Starr, as well as contemporary tastemakers like Sonny Fodera and DJ E-Clyps. 

Furthermore, Jones’ partnership with revered singers such as Russoul and Dajae (the latter of whom still performs with him to this day) on Cajual releases like "Say U Will” and "Waterfall” helped to define the vocal-house style.

Like the Cajmere project, Cajual Records has been moving slower in recent years. The label has only shared four releases since 2018. True to form, though, Jones started another label; Relief Records, the home of Green Velvet's music, shared 10 releases in 2023 alone.

Jones says he's been particularly prolific as Green Velvet because "the genres of tech house and techno have allowed me the creative freedom I require as an artist."

Now Jones is making "loads of music” as Cajmere again and recently signed a new distribution deal for Cajual Records. The true sound of Chicago is resonating with audiences in 2024, Jones says, adding "it's nice that house is making a comeback."

Jones remembers when house music was especially unpopular. He used to call radio stations in the '80s to play tracks like Jamie Principle's underground classic "Waiting On My Angel,” only to be told they didn’t play house music whatsoever. In 2024, house music records like FISHER’s "Losing It” were certified gold, and received nominations for Best Dance Recording at the 66th GRAMMY Awards. Jones is embracing this popularity with open arms.

Read more: The Rise Of Underground House: How Artists Like Fisher & Acraze Have Taken Tech House, Other Electronic Genres From Indie To EDC

"The new audience it’s attracting is excited to hear unique underground-style house records now. This is perfect for my Cajmere sets,” Jones says. "I never saw Green Velvet being more popular than Cajmere, and both sounds being as popular as they are even today.” 

While Jones is finding success in his own artistic endeavors, he points to a general lack of appreciation for Black dance artists in festival bookings. Looking at the run-of-show for ARC Festival, a festival in Chicago dedicated to house and techno music, legendary artists play some of the earliest slots. 

For the 2023 edition, Carl Craig played at 3 p.m on Saturday while the young, white John Summit, closed the festival the same night. In 2021, the acid house inventor, Chicago’s DJ Pierre, played the opening set at 2 p.m. on Saturday, while FISHER, another younger white artist, was the headliner.

In 2020, Marshall Jefferson penned an op-ed in Mixmag about the losing battle he is fighting as a Black DJ from the '90s. He mentions that younger white artists often receive upwards of $250,000 for one gig, whereas he receives around $2,000, despite the fact that he still DJs to packed crowds 30 years after he started.

Jones is doing his part to even the playing field with Legends, and according to him, things are going well after the first edition. "Seeing how much respect the fans have for the Legends was so special,” Jones says. "Hopefully they become trendy again.” 

The story of Curtis Jones is already one of legend, but it is far from over. "I feel it’s my duty to continue to make creative and innovative tracks as well as musical events. I love shining the light on new upcoming and emerging artists as well as giving the originators their proper dues,” Jones says. 

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Elyanna is every bit an artist of our specific moment. The 22-year-old Los Angeles-based singer weaves together global influences, merging sounds from her personal history with a wider pop sensibility. 

With hints of Rihanna’s sultriness and Astrud Gilberto's effortless cool, Elyanna's music is often accompanied by a pulsating beat and traditional Middle Eastern instruments. 

By uniting musical traditions from the Palestinian and Chilean sides of her family, she creates songs that are at once sweetly enticing and bracing. "Al Sham," for example, opens with ethereal, floating vocals before morphing to incorporate aggressive synths and drums. The result is a growing, idiosyncratic body of work made for both crying on the dancefloor and rump-shaking. 

Paradoxical? Sure, but there are no contradictions in Elyanna’s art, only unexpected connections that make sense as soon as she starts talking about how they fit together. Of her forthcoming album, Woledto (in English, I Am Born), Elyanna explains that she and her brother/co-composer/producer Feras wanted to create music with unusual depth. "I want people to find these clues, because that’s the kind of art I like, when it’s deep and not always on the surface," she tells GRAMMY.com.

She knows Woledto is a big swing, and relishes the feeling of freedom and self-determination that comes with that kind of risk. "I really put my heart and all my emotions, everything I feel in it, and what I love about it is that I think that it's ahead of its time."  

In 2023, Elyanna notched a unique milestone as the first Arab artist to perform in Arabic at Coachella. Her subsequent debut tour sold out every date, and her next performance in the U.S. is set for April 27 at Los Angeles’ storied Wiltern Theater. The singer/songwriter takes it all in stride, with a natural self-possession; Elyanna is an energetic, curious young woman who’s as at ease on the road as she is in the living room studio she maintains at her parents’ home. 

With Woledto out April 12, Elyanna sat down with GRAMMY.com to chat about writing authentic bangers, repping every facet of her identities at Coachella and beyond, and her seamless approach to sound and vision. 

This conversation has been condensed and edited.

Woledto is out this week – congratulations! How are you feeling about it?

I'm excited – it feels so cool! I really took my time with this one, because I was able to figure out this new layer of myself and was able to connect with my roots more than ever. 

I know that not everyone's gonna get it right away, and I believe that when you want to create art that feels timeless, you have to make sure that you don't rush it. It's fine if it takes its time. I just wanted to create something that felt outside of the world, and had its own feeling and world. 

Can you expand a bit about pouring your whole self into this album? You mentioned your feelings, your identity, and you have such an interesting, multinational identity as a Palestinian-Chilean woman who now lives in Los Angeles. How did you incorporate all of that – and other aspects of yourself – into Woledto?

I come from two different backgrounds, and it's always very natural for me to put those together; I was born and raised in Nazareth, Palestine, and I am also part Chilean, so this is my world. I love to dig deeper into culture, and find more inspirations — there's so many hidden gems in my cultures, and I feel like it's time for the world to see it and to hear about it. 

I took inspiration from my grandfather — he’s the only featured performer on this album. I saw this video of him singing in a wedding; he was a singer and a poet, and he was doing a freestyle in Arabic. I sampled that video in a song called "Sad in Pali" — me and my brother were in Palestine for a visit after a few years away, and we felt very disconnected from everything there. This album has a lot of intentional inspirations that I want people to find.

Your music videos feed into that goal, too — they’re very arty, the imagery is so distinctive. The song that leaps to mind first is "Gheneni", which opens with a male vocal — I thought maybe it was a call to worship — and then channels Rihanna in your vocal, while the visuals are a hybrid of belly dance and you and your girls all hanging out in the desert. How do you weave all of those things together into a song that means "Drive Me Crazy"?

So my studio is at home in the living room, super humble, and it’s always full of friends and family sitting around while me and my brother [Feras] are working there. 

One day my dad was watching a very dramatic Arabic show, and my brother heard this music in the back that felt so powerful, so spiritual. So my brother took that and sampled it, and that’s the vocal that opens the song. Then he made a beat that feels like tribal fusion to follow. I always say "Gheneni" is spiritual, and also reminds me of "Gasolina" by Daddy Yankee, because it’s got so much swag. I’m rapping and just doing my thing on it, it’s a rollercoaster of emotions and very sassy. I love it. 

You look so free in that video, and I noticed that in most of your videos, there’s at least a few big moments of you being surrounded by other women. It’s really memorable in "Mama Eh," too. Tell me a little bit about the aesthetic and approach you use when you’re making these videos?

I really love to collab with people — I try my best, always, to be open to ideas. Usually how it starts is with my brother, we make the music and take care of the visual creativity of it. He’s my creative director, so we always keep sharing ideas together, brainstorming, and we save it all in this little folder to use whenever the time’s right. I love to always come in ready for my videos, live performances, but I never want to forget to be natural, and I don't want to be too ready, sometimes I want to be free. Sometimes all you need is just to be you, singing on camera, and that's enough. 

I love having a lot of female empowerment around me, too. I was raised that way — my mom is a very strong woman, my grandma is a very strong woman, my sister is a very strong woman, and I find so much power, if I'm feeling down, to talk to my sister and to talk to my girlfriends. So especially as an Arab woman, I want to make sure that I lift this female energy up for all the girls out there, and all the girls in the Middle East to feel that they can dream big, and they don't have to be always so soft. 

That’s really who I am, sometimes aggressive, very passionate and on fire. I feel like every human, we have a little bit of both, and I don't want to hide any of them. I want to be real and honest.

It seems like another throughline in your music is its cinematic quality. Woledto’s title track is also the album opener, and it sounds like it could as easily have been something you wrote for a film. If you could pick any film scene for your music to play over, what would it be?

I'm such a movie nerd! Right now, the film that felt so much like the world that I create in my music is Dune, Part Two or The Black Swan. There's so many scenes that I love, but it makes so much sense from what we were just talking about the different, changing parts of our personalities that I feel like the last performance where Natalie Portman had to perform as both the white swan and the black swan would be perfect for the outros of "Kon Nafsak" or "Sad in Pali." 

I understand you had a really special experience meeting Lana del Rey on one of your music videos. It makes sense that you’d love her, her work is so cinematic and she has such a recognizable style. 

Yes! Lana’s sister Chuck is an amazing director, and she shot one of my videos, for "La Vie en Rose." It’s a cover of the Edith Piaf song, and Chuck has such a beautiful vision. 

So Lana was there for the whole shoot, and she picked my dresses, and gifted them to me! She was an angel, just the coolest, and she did not disappoint. I've been listening to Lana since I was 10, and was obsessed with her. She was literally on my phone case. Meeting her and working with her and fully trusting what she says — I cried at the end, it was amazing. 

How great to have an experience that disproves the advice never to meet your heroes. In your cover, do you sing in French, English, or Arabic? 

It’s in Arabic, the title for my version is "Al Kawn Janni Maak." I actually co-wrote that translation with my mom and my brother; I’d always wanted to hear it in Arabic. 

That's really cool. It sounds like your work is very rooted in your family, not just having them with you at home or on tour, but they’re a big part of your music itself, too. 

It was always this way, even when I was little — I was 7 years old, 10 years old, and just dreaming of being an artist. My brother is the one who discovered my talent — he’s a pianist, and he would sit next to me for hours while I'm singing with a big mic, saying "Yo, you can do this note better." 

My mom writes my music with me, and it’s very powerful and so interesting. My sister Tali is part of it, too; she’s always been very good with fashion and is my stylist. We’d always be doing fashion shoots in our backyard, where my sister would dress me and my brother would take the pictures. I don't think anything’s changed since then, it’s just on another level, a bigger scale. We complete each other. 

Let’s talk about your influences and how you find your way to them. You’ve got this great playlist on Spotify that includes such a diverse group of artists, including ones that were delightful surprises: Pink Floyd, Nancy Sinatra, Chris Isaac, and Sadé. How do you discover artists who have a long history but are new to you?

I grew up listening to and singing jazz, I used to be obsessed with it. And it was very rare in Nazareth, but I must have found videos on YouTube. Etta James’ songs feel so real and timeless. There’s a lot of live instruments, it’s very detailed and very raw. It’s so beautiful! The lyrics, the production, even the fashion —it’s a world that I just really, really love.

I am very open when it comes to music. The best thing is to have conversations with people and meet new people, they bring you so much knowledge that you can bring into your own world. 

Speaking of sharing worlds, you did that on a massive scale by playing at Coachella last year. You’re the first Arab artist to perform in Arabic at that festival, and it’s kind of shocking that it took so long for that milestone to happen. What does that experience mean to you?

I like to look at the bigger picture; you know, it was very exciting, and it's not only for me, it's for our culture, for our people. It was an honor singing at an iconic festival, and I do not want to be the last person that performs there in Arabic. 

It was a moment that I feel like we needed for our culture, and I was surprised by how many people saw that performance — I didn’t expect it, so many people were there from completely different cultures, probably not knowing what I was saying, but they still loved it. 

That mirrors your interest in and embrace of always experiencing and looking for something new, giving that to the audience, too. 

Exactly. It was new to me, too, because Coachella was really my first real performance. I'm there thinking that's a lot of responsibility on me now, so I have to make it work, to make it the best I can. I was able to bring the belly dancing, the tribal fusion dancing, all these elements that we have in our culture, like the coins on my hips — it means a lot to me that people took it in like that. 

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Since Nia Archives came on the scene in 2020, she has been making noise.

The 24-year-old native of Northern England produces jungle — the dance subgenre known for its loud, raucous breakbeats — and her achievements in her short career (figuratively) match the volume of her chosen style.

Over four years, Nia Archives has released tracks with tens of millions of Spotify streams like "Headz Gone West" and "Sober Feelz," started her own event series, Up Ya Archives, and become friends with the jungle originator Goldie. Nia also closed a stage at Coachella 2023, and opened for Beyoncé during the London RENAISSANCE tour show.

Nia’s also made significant strides for equality in dance music. In 2022, she wrote a letter to Britain’s MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) Awards imploring them to include a dance and electronic music category. In response, not only did they add the category that same year, but Nia won it.

For as much noise as she’s made in recent years, Nia always makes room in her life for contrast. Out April 12, Nia Archives' debut album, Silence Is Loud, the singer, producer, and DJ shows that there is just as much power in the quiet.

"Silence can be weakness for some people: You didn't say what you wanted to say; you were too weak to make noise," Nia tells GRAMMY.com. "But it can also be powerful. Keeping your silence. Holding your tongue and not saying what might not have been beneficial." 

This contrast is central to Nia’s music, and sees new heights on Silence. Her sweet, ringing voice counters the heaviness of jungle beats, while lighter genres are layered over fast-moving breaks. On tracks "Cards On The Table" and "Out of Options," the melodic foundation is built on Britpop-esque acoustic guitar chords. On the album's title track, Nia contrasts massive kick drums and high-pitched squeals, with softer, heartfelt lyrics detailing her dependence on her little brother.

GRAMMY.com spoke to Nia Archives about finding balance in contrast, her writing process, and making noise in the near-silent U.S. jungle scene.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

The hallmark of jungle music is busy breakbeats. How do you incorporate the concept of silence into the genre?

Jungle is so chaotic and intense. That's one of the things I've always loved about the music — the hectic drum patterns. But in my music, the songwriting is always quite emotional with a lot of meaning in it. Bringing the two together always makes something quite interesting. 

With this project, I really wanted to focus on songwriting. I took the time to research the great songwriters from the Beatles to Amy Winehouse, Radiohead, Blur. Kings of Leon were a huge inspiration to me throughout this project as well. 

In the past, a lot of music I was writing was quite surface-level. I wasn't going as inward as I could; maybe out of fear. The process of this project was different. 

I'd write the songs in bed in the morning, and then make the drum patterns on my laptop. I’d take my little demo [to my friend and producer Ethan P. Flynn] and we’d make the song in like three hours. That process really worked for me because it meant I could really get deep. 

I'd write loads of sh-t lyrics before I got to the good lyrics. In studios, it’s hard to get all the rubbish thoughts in your head and say them in front of people. So I quite enjoyed the privacy of writing in bed and taking it to Ethan. We’d just have fun and bang out all the tunes. 

How did the work of the Beatles and Radiohead manifest when you were making the album?

I've got really eclectic taste in music. I love jungle, that's my bread and butter, but I’ve always found fun in fusing genres together to make something new. 

I really enjoy deep-diving into the Beatles, Blur or Radiohead, [and] listening to the structures and the instrument choices. There are certain things that make them what they are, especially Blur with Britpop. I was listening to the Ronettes and a lot of Motown. I went to Detroit last year, and I got to go to the Motown Museum. I found that really inspiring; those productions, it's crazy what they did with what they had.

I'll never be able to make music how the people that I listen to make it — especially when you bring in jungle beats and 170 BPM. It's always gonna be a slightly off-kilter version of the original inspiration. But I think that makes something quite fun and unique.

Blur's Damon Albarn also leads Gorillaz, opening him up to all manner of collaborations. What would you think about being on a Gorillaz track at some point?

It'd be a dream come true! If there's anybody that I'm trying to get to listen to my album. It's definitely Damon Albarn. I'm actually gonna send him an unsolicited vinyl just because I really love his music. He's an incredible musician, artist, everything. He's a big inspiration to me.

You’ve said in previous interviews that jungle is "anything over a breakbeat." Why do you think contrasting sounds can fit so well over a breakbeat?

I think jungle, especially in the '90s, was so futuristic. The breaks themselves, depending on how you construct them, are so versatile. The breaks have so much room to go in whatever direction you want. You can go really heavy, or you can go really light and atmospheric. 

All of the original junglists have their own style. They weren't all trying to be the same. They were very strong in their identity, which is one of the other things I love about it.

What kind of modern music are you excited about integrating into jungle?

I quite like a lot of happy hardcore stuff, which is not new. I really enjoy those melodies [and you don't really hear that sound as much. I really love disco; I'd like to do something like that. 

You’re one of the only artists, if not the only jungle artist of this generation who has built an audience in the U.S. You’ve played Coachella and headlined U.S. tours. How does it feel to be a driving force in introducing jungle to America?

Older generations know about jungle. But I feel like a lot of the young kids in the U.S. are definitely discovering it, which is super exciting. It's really cool to build community in America as well. Every time I've played in America I get the proper ravers down. 

A big part of jungle is the culture and the community that comes with it. We have such a rich culture in the UK; we're kind of spoiled. Whereas in America it feels like people who like that music, they're still building [community].

I love playing in New York cause they've got a lot of new-gen junglists. There's a few new producers who are like 20-21 [years old] who I always hang out with when I go to New York. It's really cool to see their take on jungle, 'cause the American producers that I know have a different view of it.

In the UK we have so many jungle nights and so many raves constantly. In America, those jungle nights feel quite special and one-off. I feel really excited to keep coming back and keep building that community in America. I'm excited to see all the new producers that come up in the next couple of years, as well.

Have you supported any new American junglists by inviting them to perform at an Up Ya Archives party or playing out their tracks live?

There's a kid called Dazegxd. I got him on my Lot Radio takeover for Up Ya Archives. Then he actually played at the Knockdown Center [in Queens, NY] for me which was amazing.

I've booked him to play his first London show at an Up Ya Archives party. That's a really meaningful connection to me 'cause he's quite young and he's so excited about the music; he's proper geeking out about jungle. I love people like that because I'm also a geek of this music.

I'm looking forward to meeting more people like that. I love creating friendships and relationships with people and getting them to play my parties. 

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Where do you see your career, and jungle as a whole, going in the future?

I'd love to keep building on what I'm doing. My album, I'm hoping, is my flag in the sand moment for who I am as an album artist. There's a lot of fusions, and I'm hoping that people can hear it and understand where I'm trying to go.

I hope to make more albums and keep traveling the world. I've got a lot of exciting touring coming up this year. If I can do what I'm doing now, but a bit better in five years, I'll be a very happy person. 

My goal in life, similar to Goldie, is to do what I'm doing for the rest of my life. They've been doing it for 30 years. People come and go, but they've held it down for as long as they have, and they're still as relevant as they were 30 years ago.

That's what I want in my career. To still be able to play music and make music when I'm like 50. That is the real goal.

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The album cover photo for Mount Kimbie’s fourth LP, The Sunset Violent, captures a mundane yet curious slice of life: A car nearly tipped over and abandoned on the side of a road lined with towering cornfields. According to members Kai Campos and Dom Maker, it was taken by photographer T-Bone Fletcher as part of a project documenting his travels across the U.S. 

"There was something so peculiar about the whole scene," Maker tells GRAMMY.com, "and just kind of oddly unsettling whilst being quite peaceful at the same time." Adds Campos, "It's just such a great start to a story as well."

The making of The Sunset Violent could be its own arthouse film. In 2021, the two Brits drove to the California desert at the height of summer. Their AirBnB, with its cornhole board and ping-pong table, possessed the energy of an old frat house. The horizons were endless; entertainment options were less so, which provided the focus they needed to create. Six weeks of melting heat, arid landscapes, and wandering imaginations became sun-baked into the album’s nine tracks  — a collection of surrealist short stories, hazy guitars, and indie-rock textures that feel vast, almost exposing, and deeply rooted in its space.

"I think when you see the horizon just go on forever, it does something to your brain that creates space for ideas," Campos says. "It's definitely the most American record we've made."

Those Yucca Valley creations seem a world away from the London dubstep scene in which Maker and Campos launched Mount Kimbie. Their 2010 debut LP Crooks & Lovers pushed genre boundaries through delicate and intricate electronic compositions more suited for headphones than subwoofer-rattling. Their next two albums incorporated live instruments, original vocals, and more traditional song structure, and with live shows a bigger focus, they recruited drummer Marc Pell and keyboardist Andrea Balency-Béarn for their touring band. 

Maker and Campos' paths even diverged for a time. Maker relocated to Los Angeles in 2016 and produced for James Blake, Jay-Z, Travis Scott, and others, while Campos turned to DJing. On their 2022 double album MK 3.5: Die Cuts | City Planning, each worked on his half independently of the other, building two worlds inhabited by separate sonic ecosystems.

Their desert reunion showed them the way forward, together, to a sound and style they "want to keep doing more of, which we haven't really had before," Maker says. That included Pell and Balency-Béarn officially joining Mount Kimbie, and Maker returning to London.

Ahead of the album’s April 5 release, Maker and Campos sat down with GRAMMY.com to chronicle their "inevitable" journey to The Sunset Violent.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Dom, it’s funny that you made this album, one so rooted in California, right before moving back to London. Is it me or are California albums a rite of passage for bands these days?

Dom Maker: It’s quite strange because we didn't really attach that much to the trip to California when we were out there. But in retrospect, and in actually speaking about this record in interviews and with friends, we started to realize how much that experience really bled into it; sort of the end of an era there for me. So it felt good to come away with a document of that period of time in my life.

Kai Campos: Like Dom said, we hadn't really considered how American in aesthetic it was. I think when you grow up in the UK and other parts of the world, you kind of inherit a lot of American culture at the same time, so you're always having this slightly removed relationship with it. The guitar music that I listened to when I was thinking about this album was mostly American, and it was just an interesting place to think about writing from. Over the last 10 years or longer, [we have] been so associated with London, so it was interesting to remove ourselves from that familiar situation in some ways.

That area of California in particular, so close to L.A., is very accessible and you can be there in a couple of hours in the car. At the same time, it feels really remote and unique and special, the landscapes and stuff like that. 

Can you tell me more about the guitar music you were listening to while making this album?

Campos: Sometimes there's songs or bands that I’ll hear one time, years and years before, and it'll always be in my head that I'm going to try and take whatever experience I had from listening to that and try and make some work. So there's all these little bits and pieces that collect over the years until there's enough of a space where I feel like, okay, I feel like I have a voice in this. Sometimes it's just one song from a band. There’s a track called "Rena" by Sonic Youth that I heard more than a decade ago that’s always been in the back of my head: One day, I'm going to try and rip that off.

Then there's other things to do with the sound of the guitars. There's a band called Land of Talk that has this super flat, compressed guitar sound that just sparked something in my head. And then more jam band, almost comical American guitar music, like NRBQ. All of these things just sit around in the soup in your brain until you find a way to articulate them yourself. I think the record in general is the friction between being British and how you interact with American culture in general.

Can you expand on that?

Campos: When you're a kid in the UK — I'm thinking early to mid-'90s — America is a bit of a fairytale, and it seems so shiny and exciting. Obviously, because it's a real place, it's way more complicated than that. And so there's a little bit of the fairytale kind of crumbling. At the same time [there's] Dom's perspective as somebody who had been living there for a long time. So it wasn't a conscious thing, but when we reflected on the record, we realized that there may be a theme here.

Maker: For me it was skating. All the skate stuff that I watched was from the States and it was like, oh my god, it's sunny all the time there. And that alone was amazing. 

I thought that America would be way more similar to where I'm from, the way things worked and the people I would be around. And that's completely not the case. That kind of friction, I found, was quite juicy as inspiration — not necessarily friction in a negative sense, but just that abrasiveness between my understanding of the world and the world around me. Even more so when you go to the desert  — the deepest, darkest like Yucca Valley in California  — that really made a lot of this record flourish.

The Sunset Violent is a lyric from your song "Dumb Guitar." It’s a visceral phrase that stirs me even if I can't quite grasp what it means. How do you interpret it, and how does that inform the record?

Maker: Honestly, that's kind of exactly how I feel, the way you feel about it. We picked out a few lyrics that we liked; it’s really not really a well-thought-out sort of title or anything. It just felt fitting for the sound and for that slight friction: The peacefulness of a sunset, and then the violence doesn't seem to fit, but it kind of does in a weird way. 

A big part of the record in general for us, especially for me with the lyric writing, was trying to set a scene that was a little bit unorthodox and maybe even slightly comical. So yeah, "the sunset violent" just felt like the one line that really stuck out. I love it more and more every time I think about it.

Is there a lyrical thread throughout the album, or is each song its own chapter?

Maker: I think each song is definitely its own short story. Some of my favorite writing that I've ever read is by Roald Dahl. A lot of his adult writing is brilliant because each story just casts a spell on you and takes you to a completely different place. With this album, I wanted to really tap into my love of short stories and writing that's very much fiction. It has some grounding in reality, but there's that fictional feel to it. 

I suppose it’s a new thing for me because I've really never written lyrics for this project. There's never been any sort of lead vocal from the band internally. So it was quite difficult for me initially to try and figure out what I wanted to say. Then I was like, well, actually I don't really want to say anything, and that was quite freeing in itself. 

I read about how the Pixies wrote "Where is My Mind?" — I was like, where are these f—ing insane lyrics from? — and he's like, "Oh, I was snorkeling in the Bahamas and I was just writing about a fish that I saw." The idea of just letting go of trying to write about something was really, really good for me. Absorbing surroundings and trying to feed some of the visuals that I was seeing into the writing was the main thing I wanted to do.

What specific visuals stand out?

Maker: I think the world of "Dumb Guitar": The idea of this slowly degrading, failing relationship and it all kind of coming to a head in this weird resort in China on a beach. I've never been to a beach in China, but I imagine everything's a bit artificial. 

What song would you say became the core of the album? The track where you realized, yes, this is the direction that we should go?

Campos: Yeah, there's a few different moments. You need that initial thing to happen where you get really excited and have enough of a vision to move in a certain direction, and that probably was "Dumb Guitar." 

There were maybe a couple of false starts before that. But ["Dumb Guitar"] was the first one that in terms of the songwriting made me a bit uncomfortable. You try to take that as a good sign [that] you're doing something new to you. To me that was more conventional songwriting, which I would never have done in the past. Even something as simple as a chord that leads into the chorus: It makes the human monkey brain feel good.

That was one of the first ones that Dom had written, and that was such an exciting moment to hear the lyrics and song really come to life. Writing [instrumentation] with vocals in mind is so much more freeing. The vocals are doing so much that you don't have to; you can work in a more subtle way and not try and demand everyone's attention all the time with the music. 

I think "Fish Brain" was another one that really came together. That was probably the one that we worked with Andrea very closely in finishing the song and it really helped us push it to another level. 

How would you say The Sunset Violent evolves Mount Kimbie’s sound from your 2017 album Love What Survives?

Campos: [Our goal was to] write in a way that was more direct. Obviously that can mean lots of different things, but whatever the shortest route for an idea to get executed was what I thought would be interesting to do. I guess that really means [being] more accessible. 

But obviously it wasn't a shot at commercial success. It just so happened that the idea of writing songs that were catchy— just really as simple as they could be, while still being interesting and having quality. That was the major difference from the work that we've done in the past… You can kind of see the evolution of the band through the records. To me, this one feels quite fundamentally different in the way that the songs are written.

In what way?

Campos: I think just the simplicity, or the feeling of simplicity. What I realized over the years was that the pop music that I really enjoyed, or the songwriting that I really enjoyed, sounded simple. And then when you dig into it and try to deconstruct it, you realize there's actually these very important nuances to it that make it work, but from the listener's perspective, it just feels right. 

So it was just trying to do that: have these songs that make you feel something in your gut, but you don't necessarily need to understand why. 

Your music has evolved so much since Crooks & Lovers. Looking back, are you surprised where you've ended up? Or do you feel it was inevitable?

Maker: Oddly, I was thinking about this today. I think it was actually inevitable because we were just really interested in and excited by a certain style and scene in music when we first moved to London when we were younger; 2009, 2010, that era. It was a fascination that really is in just a place and time. 

A lot of that reminds me of growing up, us figuring out London, moving from small towns to the big city, and everything about it being exciting. But I think the fact that we immediately were like, we need to play this live said a lot. Through the years that's been a huge thing, the live show, and trying to approach these songs live has always been something we've really enjoyed doing, and we've got so many amazing memories doing it.It sort of naturally has landed us in this scenario where the sound that we have at the moment feels like something that we want to keep doing more of, which we haven't really had before. We've made records and it's been a long process making them, then when you get to the end, it's sort of like, we should find something new. But, this time, we finished the record and immediately there's still this burning energy to keep going with this sound and writing style. It feels really good and exciting, and I'm glad that the road led us to where we're at now. 

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