Stockholm brings feminist techno-house energy; Toronto answers with smooth R&B-laced groove pop. Three artists, very good reasons the dancefloor does not need to choose a lane.
FREDRYD – Girls Run The Dancefloor
FREDRYD delivers an excellent piece of high-energy techno-house with “Girls Run The Dancefloor”: a hard, pumping track built for stages and the people who own them.
“Girls Run The Dancefloor” is a tech-house track with a banger of a beat designed to hit at the point where the crowd stops thinking and starts moving. FREDRYD structures the build well, leans on some pretty tasty samples, and rides that off beat hi hat in style. The track draws explicit lineage from Beyonce’s “Run the World” and from Fred again’s production approach in its technical DNA, and those two poles sit further apart than you might expect, which is precisely what makes this track so compelling. Interestingly, it’s a record about professional dancers: people who work hard and have fun simultaneously, and the production mirrors that duality really well.
Fred Ryden operates as FREDRYD out of Stockholm, where he works across EDM, house, progressive house, and indie electronic, building his music on Bandlab since the beginning. His 2024 debut album “Love Is What We Need” established his presence in electronic music; and things have only grown since then. Signed here to Late Hours Records, this is a real banger and we can’t wait for more.
Ekelle – (Turn Me) Loose
Ekelle makes “(Turn Me) Loose” a gorgeous post-breakup R&B house anthem: warm, rhythmically assured, and built around the very specific joy of finally choosing yourself.
“(Turn Me) Loose” sits at the precise moment when heartbreak tips into relief. The production blends smooth R&B textures with an alt-pop sensibility and a warm, rhythmic groove that keeps the track feeling celebratory rather than bitter. Ekelle’s vocals carry both the emotional weight and the confidence the lyric really needs: this is a song about reclaiming joy through community, written and delivered by someone who sounds like she means it. It sits in the same conversation as Doechii and SZA, comfortable in the space between modern R&B and alt-pop without being fully claimed by either.
Ekelle is a Toronto rapper, singer, and songwriter who coined her own genre descriptor, Hood Pop, to describe the territory she actually works in: popular music with a street edge, where hip-hop, pop, and R&B overlap on her own terms. Her 2023 single “Flo” landed on Complex’s Best Canadian Tracks of the Week, earned Spotify editorial placement, and received radio play. Excitingly, “(Turn Me) Loose” arrives while she works toward her next album, and it makes a compelling case for what that record might sound like. A great single.
PlanG – Quite Some Feelin’
PlanG’s “Quite Some Feelin'” is a brilliant melodic rock anthem: a song about the joy of performing that actually delivers the same joy to the listerner
“Quite Some Feelin'” started life years ago as an acoustic guitar sketch and was eventually developed into a full-band production at FrenchQuarter Studios in Cork City. The track is built around electric and acoustic lead guitar work that gives the verses room to breathe before the final chorus opens up with Sam Guisinger’s vocal soaring over Lang’s, a genuinely transformative moment in an arrangement that really earns it. The production, expertly handled by German producer George Micansky, keeps the instruments blending wonderfully, and it’s got a kind of Dire Straits vibe to the whole thing. Which, as a big DS fan, is pretty big praise. It’s a fun concept too; about the particular electricity of playing music you love to a room full of people who are with you.
PlanG is the project of Padraic Lang from Midleton, County Cork, and “Quite Some Feelin'” brings together a Cork-based team assembled across several studio sessions. Vocalist Sam Guisinger is American-born but Cork-based; producer George Micansky is German and also Cork-based; Lang himself was born in Dublin. The songwriting draws from a wide range of reference points, from The Eagles and Paul Simon through to Irish artists including Paul Brady and Lisa Hannigan. It’s a beautiful, melodic stunner and I’ll be keeping an eye on what this lot do next.