Protected: The 50 Greatest Australian Electronic Acts of All Time

DJs who also own a label are a dime a dozen. There’s nothing ordinary about Nina Las Vegas, though. The DJ, producer, and entrepreneur (real name: Nina Agzarian) has played every major festival in her homeland, including Big Day Out and Stereosonic, and has had several solo headline tours.

As a recording artist, Nina has released a string of EPs and has collaborated with the likes of Anna Lunoe, Vera Blue, Ecca Vandal, and Ninajirachi. In 2015, Nina launched NLV Records. A decade later, it’s one of the longest-running, female-founded and led record labels in the country. —L.B.

DJ Angus Galloway was a unique talent who burned brighter than anyone else in Brisbane’s nascent dance music scene. During the Nineties, Angus spread the word of dance music, then a niche genre, during his eight-year-long residency on 4ZZZ’s Saturday night dance show.

A master of vinyl who was comfortable working three decks at once, Angus was an innovator who peerlessly blended hip-hop skills into house sets, and was arguably the greatest technical DJ of anyone working raves and nightclubs in Australia from the late Eighties until his untimely death in February 2008, aged 38. —L.B.

Hailing from Canberra, the duo of Vance Musgrove and Mikah Freeman, both DJs, producers, remixers, and radio presenters, got things moving in the 2010s as The Aston Shuffle. They’ve reworked tracks for Fatboy Slim, Avicii, Dizzee Rascal, Empire of the Sun, London Grammar, and more.

Debut 2011 album Seventeen Past Midnight enjoyed a warm critical response, with Rolling Stone giving the LP a four-star review. Their 2013 collaboration with fellow Australian producer and artist Tommy Trash, “Smash”, was a smash, vaulting to Number One on the Beatport platform. The following year, Photographs arrived at Number 12 on the ARIA Albums Chart. —L.B.

Tigerlily pounced in the 2010s, during which time she became one of Australia’s most in-demand DJs. In one impressive spell, the Sydney artist (real name: Dara Hayes) was voted as the Top Female DJ Down Under (via inthemix) for three successive years and was rated in the Top Five overall for both 2014 and 2015.

Tigerlily has released music through Island Records Australia, part of the world’s biggest music company, Universal; played to heaving crowds at Tomorrowland and Ultra Music Festival; and supported Dutch superstar Tiësto in the US and Asia. —L.B.

Blending house, electro, and disco, Flight Facilities (Hugo Gruzman and James Lyell) took to the air in 2010 with their debut single “Crave You”. The dancefloor cut logged 116 weeks on

Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart, where it peaked at Number 21, and raked in more than 176 million US streams. Their two studio albums were domestic mainstream hits, both cracking the ARIA Top 10 (2014’s Down to Earth at Number Three, and 2021’s Forever at Number Six). Forever won an AIR Award and the opening track “Lights Up”, featuring Channel Tres, crashed Billboard’s electronic music charts. —L.B.

There’s been no jump scares in the career of Miami Horror. Formed by Benjamin Plant in 2008, the electronic-pop act are a musical step out of an Eighties haze, a funky update on New Order. Debut album Illumination grazed the ARIA Top 10, at Number 10.

Total streams top 300 million and Miami Horror have worked the crowds at Coachella, Governors Ball, Splendour in the Grass, and Beyond the Valley. Miami Horror’s third and most recent LP, 2025’s We Always Had Tomorrow, was released through a deal with Canada’s Nettwerk. —L.B.

Fodera isn’t your typical Australian living in London. The Adelaide-born DJ and producer is a giant in his class, counting Calvin Harris, MK, and Diplo among his collaborators. After a three-year residency at Amnesia in Ibiza, the house master locked up a new, months-long Balearic Island stint in 2025 at Pacha.

Fodera has five albums to his name, the most recent, 2021’s Wide Awake, released through his own Solotoko label. Six of his tunes have cracked the UK Singles Chart, including 2024’s Top 10, BRIT Award-nominated “Somedays” with Jazzy and D.O.D. —L.B.

Electronic dance-pop outfit Boxcar were an early scene builder. Formed in Brisbane back in 1986, Boxcar sounded like the outcome of a chance mingling at a nightclub of ABC, New Order, and Cut Copy. The American party scene loved it, as Boxcar poured out three hits on the Billboard dance charts: “Freemason (You Broke the Promise)” (1988), “Insect”, and “Gas Stop (Who Do You Think You Are?)” (both from 1990).

Boxcar released two albums through Andrew Penhallow’s Volition Records, Vertigo (1990) and Algorhythm (1994), before disbanding in 1997. Boxcar reunited for live performances in 2010 and in 2014. —L.B.

Bag Raiders didn’t steal immediate glory. Formed in 2006 by Jack Glass and Chris Stracey, the duo had an unlikely hit with “Shooting Stars”, which became a viral internet meme almost 10 years after its release.

Released on 2008’s EP Turbo Love! and re-released for their debut self-titled LP in 2010, “Shooting Stars” cracked the Billboard charts in 2017, and the album surged up the US electronic music charts. Bag Raiders, released through Modular, bagged an ARIA Top 10 debut at Number Seven. —L.B.

Cosmo’s Midnight were born to do it. Really. The Sydney electronic act is the duo of twin brothers Cosmo and Patrick Liney. The siblings have amassed more than 500 million streams and released three albums, the first of which, 2018’s What Comes Next, slotted into the ARIA Top 40.

The lads caught the ears of major label powerbrokers in the US, where they signed with RCA Records. In 2020, a K-pop crossover occurred when the lads were credited as songwriters and producers on BTS’ single “Fly to My Room”, housed on the superstar boyband’s BE album. —L.B.

Canberra duo Peking Duk haven’t released a studio album, but they still have some of the country’s best dance tracks under their belt. Adam Hyde and Reuben Styles have played some of the country’s biggest music festivals and have two ARIAs to their name — Best Dance/Electronic Release for 2014’s “High” and Song of the Year for 2017’s “Stranger”.

Peking Duk take their craft seriously, clearly, but they always remember to have fun. They teamed up with KFC in 2022 for their own burger, the Peking Cluk, and the branded “Feastival”, a day-long fest on Sydney’s Cockatoo Island. They followed that up two years later with the instantly-iconic Bunnings Rave, with tickets to the sensational car park event selling out in mere minutes. —Neil Griffiths

Since the ARIA Best Dance/Electronic Release was first handed out in 1995, just four acts have gone back-to-back: PNAU, The Presets, Dom Dolla, and Infusion. Hailing from Wollongong and formed by Jamie Stevens and Manuel Sharrad, Infusion were the first to do it, the lads snagging pointy trophies for “Girls Can Be Cruel” (2004) and “Six Feet Above Yesterday” (2005). 

Infusion, at their best, were unleashing electro bangers and party tunes that could sit with Fatboy Slim. Three albums dropped in the 2000s: Phrases and Numbers (2000), Six Feet Above Yesterday (2004), and All Night Sun Light (2009). —L.B.

Like Confidence Man and other heavy hitters from Down Under, Adelaide-born DJ and producer Juliet Fox is better known on the other side of the world. The queen of techno splits her time between Ibiza and Berlin, where she operates her own imprint TREGAMBE.

Fox has played to the masses at Tomorrowland, Loveland, Time Warp, and more. Over time, she has collaborated with the likes of Green Velvet, Coyu, Ramiro Lopez, and Sonny Fodera, and landed at Number One on Traxsource, the underground electronic music download platform. Fox now juggles travel, the party scene, and studio life with parenthood. —L.B.

A trailblazing DJ, remixer, and producer, Melbourne-born Racic was a vinyl junkie who would import records from New York and Chicago, introducing house music to Australia’s underground. A musical cornerstone for Andrew Penhallow’s Volition Records, it was Racic who produced and reinterpreted hits for Severed Heads and Boxcar.

An early adopter of samplers, drum machines, and other digital instruments that would shape electronic music, Racic, through his mastery of manipulating analogue tape, would extend mixes and transform familiar tunes in ways that few others could do at the time. Racic died in 1996 at the age of 32. —L.B.

Gold Coast DJs and producers Matt and Chris Stafford helped usher in the mainstream explosion of EDM in the 2000s and 2010s, with their blend of house, electro, and progressive house music.

From a golden run in the mid 2000s, the New Zealand-born brothers enjoyed lofty status on the inthemix rankings of Australia’s top DJs, and in 2010 graduated to the small screen with the FOX8 documentary series The Stafford Brothers, which aired for two seasons. The Stafford Brothers were the first electronic dance music act to sign to the US label Cash Money Records, in 2012. —L.B.

Together, Sydney DJ Kid Kenobi (real name: Jesse Desenberg) and Shureshock (Cameron James Brown), the Brisbane MC, form a breaks tandem that generates enough energy to light up a festival. Kenobi, at his peak, was voted Australia’s Number One DJ in the Technics inthemix Top 50 for three straight years.

Shureshock unleashed his vocals on Clubbers Guide to Breaks and Kid Kenobi Sessions, and, in doing so, became the first MC to appear on a global Ministry of Sound compilation. The pair clocked up the air miles with global tours, both are label owners, and their next collaboration isn’t far off. —L.B.

Europe’s hottest summer hit of 2010, “We No Speak Americano”, travelled all the way from Sydney. Signed to DJ Ajax’s Sweat It Out in 2009, Yolanda Be Cool (Andrew Stanley and Matthew Handley) joined forces with Australian producer DCUP (Duncan MacLennan) on the club anthem, anchored around a sample from Italian artist Renato Carosone’s 1956 recording of “Tu Vuò Fà L’Americano”.

The song nabbed an ARIA Award for Best Dance/Electronic Release, hitting Number One in over 20 countries. Other hits followed, including the ARIA platinum-certified “Sugar Man”. Ajax (real name: Adrian Thomas) tragically died in 2015 after he was struck by a car, aged 41. —L.B.

Havana Brown brought the dancefloor into the mainstream like no other female Australian DJ before her. The Melbourne-based artist had a rare Billboard Hot 100 Top 40 hit with 2011’s “We Run the Night” featuring Pitbull, which peaked at Number 26. In Australia, the track became an ARIA Top Five single, is certified triple-platinum, and collected two of Brown’s four career ARIA Award nominations.

Spots at a Grammys afterparty and the Singapore F1 Grand Prix thrust her into the spotlight. Brown released 10 volumes of her popular Crave compilations and landed four consecutive Number Ones on the Billboard US Hot Dance Club Chart Hits. —L.B.

Cassian (full name: Cassian Stewart-Kasimba) is in a small class of Australian electronic music artists who own a Grammy Award. The producer, DJ, and mixing engineer is a leader in melodic house and techno, his special sound capturing more than 175 million streams and upwards of 1.4 million monthly Spotify listeners.

He’s accepted invitations to perform at Tomorrowland, Coachella, EDC, and Lollapalooza, plus iconic venues such as Hï Ibiza, Green Valley, Printworks London, and others. In the US, Cassian has pushed electronic music into new frontiers as musical director for Anyma’s The End of Genesys, presented at the Sphere in Las Vegas. —L.B.

After forming in Melbourne in 2001 and signing with Modular Records in Australia and the US soon after, Cut Copy started making waves globally with their 2008-released second album, In Ghost Colours.

As well as topping the albums chart at home, the record included hit tracks like “Lights & Music” and “Hearts on Fire”, both of which featured on the soundtrack for the juggernaut FIFA video game franchise (at least a dozen Cut Copy songs have been licensed to video games, a crossover most electronic artists can only dream of). Cut Copy’s seventh studio album is slated to arrive in late 2025. —N.G.

Danceable, fun, and totally indie, Sneaky Sound System’s self—titled, triple platinum-certified debut album from 2006 spawned a handful of endlessly replayable electropop anthems. Play “UFO” or “Pictures” or “I Love It” and watch early millennials fill up the dancefloor.

Now the duo of Connie Mitchell (Miss Connie) and Angus McDonald (Black Angus) — former member Daimon Downey (MC Double D) departed in 2009 — Sneaky Sound System have soaked up 14 ARIA Awards nominations (for two wins), and Miss Connie has worked with the likes of Jay-Z, Kanye West, Rick Ross, Snoop Dogg, and Pete Tong. New single “Shiver” dropped in 2025. —Conor Lochrie

Streaming figures don’t define an artist, but it was impossible to not be impressed at CYRIL’s seismic numbers in 2024. The Number One track on Spotify by an Australian artist worldwide in 2024? CYRIL’s remix of Disturbed’s “The Sound of Silence”.

The NSW-raised DJ and producer (real name: Cyril Riley) also bagged two titles in the Top Shazams list for 2024, and his two-time, ARIA Award-nominated cut “Stumblin’ In”, his reimagining of Chris Norman and Suzi Quatro’s 1970s classic, was the top-ranked homegrown track on Apple Music’s Top Songs tally for Australia. CYRIL has confidently announced himself as a global electronic star. —C.L.

When the Big Day Out stole young Australians’ attention in the Nineties, and triple j and Rage had the bases covered on radio and TV, Gerling — Darren Cross, Paul Towner (aka Presser), and Burke Reid — had their moment. With a sound that would find fans in any nightclub or sweaty room with sticky carpets, Gerling landed ARIA nominations and dropped four studio albums.

Their second, 2001’s When Young Terrorists Chase the Sun, was all class, combining elements of French Touch, disco, and more. Gerling disbanded in 2007, a year after Spotify was founded and well before the streaming revolution that could’ve shunted them into prominence. —L.B.

Two years after forming, Southend won gold with “The Winner Is…”. Southend (Stuart McCarthy, Steve Younan, Sameer Sengupta, and vocalist Melinda Page) collaborated with trance specialist DJ Nik Fish (real name: Nik Vatoff) on the cut, which sampled former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch’s speech announcing Sydney as the host city for the 2000 Summer Olympics.

It was a party captured on wax. And it was a hit, cracking the ARIA Top 10. A remix arrived in time for the Sydney Olympics, titled “The Winner Is…2000”. Southend’s Sengupta enjoyed a solo career as Pocket, and formed the ARIA Award-nominated dance music duo Pocket 808. —L.B.

The pandemic was bad for business, terrible for mental health. Shouse, somehow, found the antidote. In 2022, the indie Melbourne outfit had a global hit with “Love Tonight”, an end-of-lockdown anthem. The creation of Jack Madin and Ed Service, one a primary school teacher, the other an arts community manager, Shouse took four-plus years to take off.

When “Love Tonight” did, it cracked the UK Top 20, Top 10 in France and Germany, and accumulated more than one billion streams. It’s gold, platinum, double-platinum, and diamond certified in over 30 countries, including the UK and US. A debut album, Collective Ecstasy, is due out July 4th. —L.B.

Finding success in your home country is one thing, but breaking into the UK market? Luude has been there, done that, and made it look easy. His big breakthrough in 2022 came with two remixes. The first of those, “Down Under”, earned the approval of Men at Work frontman Colin Hay, who contributed vocals, and it cracked the Top 10 in the UK and Australia and won the ARIA Award for Best Dance/Electronic Release. Follow-up “Big City Life”, a collaboration with Mattafix, saw Luude (real name: Christian Benson) crack the UK Top 10 once again. Don’t bet against the producer hitting those rare heights again. —C.L.

Timmy Trumpet’s hardstyle anthems might be like catnip to a raver, but there’s real depth behind the instantaneous addictiveness of Trumpet (real name: Timothy Smith). He’s never afraid to try spinning in new subgenres, and it’s always a blast when he incorporates live trumpet into his performances — hence the stage name.

He’s collaborated with Armin van Buuren, Steve Aoki, and Hardwell, performed at Tomorrowland, Ultra, and EDC, and his streams top 2.5 billion. In 2019, he came in at Number 13 in the annual DJ Mag Top 100 DJ poll, the highest ever placing for any Australian act. —C.L.

Adelaide DJ and producer Groove Terminator (real name: Simon Lewicki) helped guide Australia’s electronic music scene from underground raves into the big leagues. Groove Terminator was the first Australian DJ signed to a major label in the late Nineties, landing a global hit with “One More Time (The Sunshine Song)”.

In 2001, with his Chili Hi Fly collective, he cracked the US Billboard charts with “Is It Love?” Lately he’s formed an inspirational alliance with South Africa’s Soweto Gospel Choir; their collaborative album, History of House, was nominated for Best World Music Album at the 2024 ARIA Awards. —L.B.

During Australia’s rave heyday in the Nineties, Sydney’s Peter “Peewee” Ferris was the heavyweight champ. A DJ, producer, label co-owner (Two Tribes Records), and artist with several aliases (Pipi Le Oui, Sweatbox HQ, and Splice Collective), Peewee composed music for the 2000 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in his hometown — an unbeatable career highlight.

A multiple ARIA Award nominee, the party starter had a Top 20 hit with 1995’s “I Feel It”. Peewee was front and centre as dance music elevated from the underground to the mainstream. —L.B.

Vision Four 5 combined electronic dance music with performances that featured interactive video technology, long before others could figure out how to do it. The trailblazing Brisbane outfit was founded by Dr Noel Burgess, then a student in music technology, who started Vision Four 5 with a lineup that included Gavin Sade, Tim Gruchy, Ben Suthers, and Al Ferguson. Burgess and co. were in the thick of Brisbane’s underground scene in the early-Nineties, during which time they dropped the albums Texture (1993) and Humid (1995).

They were Boiler Room regulars at the Big Day Out, sharing the stage with the Prodigy and many others, with Suthers growing the dance space to rival the main stage over the next 20 years. Burgess and Suthers reunited the act for shows in 2002 and 2008, and Burgess/Gruchy paired for Ministry of Sound in 2023. —L.B.

Severed Heads were ahead of their time, experimenting with tape loops and electronics mixed with live video. Formed in Sydney in the late Seventies, Severed Heads created one of Australia’s enduring experimental music pieces with 1984’s “Dead Eyes Opened”, a dark retelling of a grisly murder set to delicious synthesised arpeggios.

The original is now stored with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Robert Racic’s superb update in 1994 sent the song across triple j’s airwaves, and saw Severed Heads play the Boiler Room at the Big Day Out. Severed Heads toured, dissolved, reunited, and, after a US tour, hung up their leads in 2019. Band member Garry Bradbury passed in 2022. —L.B.

When EDM took over music at the turn of the 2010s, Tommy Trash was right there at the ascension. Earning a swathe of fans thanks to remixes of Delta Goodrem, The Veronicas, and many others, Trash went global in 2012 with “Reload”, a stunningly euphoric collaboration with Swedish producer Sebastian Ingrosso.

The vocal version with John Martin entered charts around the world the following year, even skyrocketing to Number Three on the UK Singles Chart. Critical acclaim also came the Ministry of Sound Australia alum’s way, including a Grammy nomination in 2012 for his remix of Deadmau5’ “The Veldt”. Before Dom Dolla and CYRIL, before even Flume, Trash was showing what Australian electronic music was all about on a global scale. —C.L.

Formed in 1981 by Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, Dead Can Dance created a sound, a mood, that couldn’t be pigeonholed — textures of darkness and light that were complex, heartwarming, and heartbreaking. Their 1993 album, Into the Labyrinth, sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide, cracking the Billboard 200 chart.

Four of their albums have impacted the UK chart, and they’re recognised as one of the most internationally successful artists on the 4AD roster. “They severed boundaries and set music free from the fetters of time and place, soaring out of the immediate world,” says 4AD. “Musical outsiders they may have been, but Dead Can Dance’s vision and faith will ensure a continuing legacy and an undiminished appeal.” —L.B.

Carmelo Bianchetti is Australia’s Godfather of Techno. An Adelaide native, Bianchetti was a king of underground dance music in the early Nineties, a man who, as DJ HMC, introduced dirty grooves with the stamp of Chicago and Detroit. Think “Phreakin’”, “6 A.M.”, and  “LSD”, one particularly nasty cut that got pumped to a global audience by Carl Cox, who dropped it on F.A.C.T. in 1997.

A late change of tune in the 2000s saw Bianchetti flip to another creative alias, Late Nite Tuff Guy (LNTG), a purveyor of reimagined vintage disco and soul. Bianchetti’s music will live forever. “LSD”, from 1995, is stored with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. —L.B.

Perth drum‘n’bass merchants Pendulum crashed the UK in the 2000s with spectacular results. Formed by Rob Swire, Gareth McGrillen, and Paul “El Hornet” Harding, Pendulum had a smash with their independently-released debut LP Hold Your Colour in 2005. Powered by bangers “Tarantula” and “Fasten Your Seatbelt”, the album went platinum in the UK. In 2005, Swire and co. nailed a dream collaboration, remixing The Prodigy’s “Voodoo People”.

Their follow-up, In Silico, released through a new major label deal with Warner Music, went to Number Two in the UK and Number Nine in Australia. Third album Immersion went one better — it topped the UK chart, peaking at Number Three here. In 2011, Swire and McGrillen formed the electro house duo Knife Party; a 2012 collaboration with Swedish House Mafia (“Antidote”) went to Number Four on the UK Singles Chart. —L.B.

Melbourne DJ and producer Anthony Pappa is one of the outstanding technical DJs of his time who, during the Nineties and Noughties, was arguably Australia’s highest flyer. Pappa made his name by winning Australia’s DMC DJ championship as a 15 year old, then the youngest to do it. He had relocated to the UK where he would play the biggest clubs for the most prestigious names in dance music, including Cream and Ministry of Sound.

Pappa appeared on DJ Mag‘s Top 100 DJs each year between 1997 and 2003, and was the magazine’s cover star in 2000. Pappa is a rare breed — a house DJ who could scratch and work three or four decks. —L.B.

Quench’s mid-Nineties trance classic “Dreams” is a monster track that achieves lift-off with the assistance of chimes and a sweeping refrain that defined an era. The project of C.J. Dolan, and co-produced with Sean Quinn, “Dreams” dropped in late 1993 and would play in dancefloors around the world. “Dreams” appeared on the album Sequenchial in 1994, followed up in 2000 by Consequenchial.

Carl Cox loved Quench’s “Hope” so much he remixed it on his groundbreaking F.A.C.T. beat-mixed collection. If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, Doolan and Quinn can pat themselves on the back. Lost Tribe’s “Gamemaster” from 1997 is almost a replica of “Dreams”, a song that ought to be recognised as one of the greatest contemporary works to come from Australia. —L.B.

The DJ, producer, and member of Future Sound of Melbourne (FSOM) had a hit with 1998’s “Addicted to Bass”, a pre-dubstep collaboration with vocalist Amiel Daemion. The track cracked the Top 40 in Australia and peaked at Number Two on the Official UK Chart in 2002, after debuting at Number 68 the previous week. In the days before the download and streaming revolutions, record merchants would sit on stock until release day.

Some eager retailers, however, broke the embargo. Had they waited, Abrahams would’ve had a chart crown. Earlier, Abrahams and Davide Carbone formed FSOM, winning the ARIA for Best Dance/Electronic Release in 1996 for Chapter One. Abrahams has also made music for the screen, including co-production of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! soundtrack. —L.B.

The duo made up of Cheyne Coates and Andy Van Dorsselaer (aka Andy Van) caught their big break with the 1999 post-disco hit, “Don’t Call Me Baby”. As well as peaking at Number Two here, the track went global, hitting Number One in New Zealand and the UK.

It also picked up a number of ARIA Awards, including Single of the Year and Highest Selling Single. Madison Avenue released their first and only album, The Polyester Embassy, in 2000, before their eventual split in 2003. “Don’t Call Me Baby” made a comeback in 2014 when a remix went to Number One on the ARIA Club Tracks Chart. —L.B.

Once half of local duo Cut Snake, FISHER (full name: Paul Fisher) blew up in 2018 with the Grammy-nominated global hit, “Losing It”. The tune also hit Number One on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart.

Since then, the Gold Coast producer has graced the stages of Coachella, the mainstage at Tomorrowland, is one of the top DJs in Ibiza and Las Vegas, and has his own Australian festival, OUT 2 LUNCH, which returns in 2025. His elite profile in the US was confirmed when March 29th, 2025 was recognised as “Day of the Fish” in Las Vegas. —N.G.

Since forming in 2016, party animals Confidence Man have got the place bouncing. To date, the Brisbane-bred, UK-based unit have released three studio albums, two EPs, and gathered a string of ARIA and AIR Award nominations, as well as shortlisting for International Group of the Year at the 2025 BRIT Awards. Led by the boisterous Janet Planet and Sugar Bones (and the “silent” production duo of Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie), ConMan first put their stamp on the global scene when they performed at the iconic Glastonbury Festival in 2023.

It’s in the UK and Europe where ConMan have made the biggest impact. “We knew pretty early that the UK got us more than Australia did,” Bones told Rolling Stone AU/NZ last year. “It was like that situation of when a band pops up and they just belong somewhere else. We’re still trying to do the whole America thing. We’ve only just started that.” The deluxe version of their UK top 10 album from 2024 album, 3AM (LA LA LA), dropped in February. —L.B.

VASSY is an icon of electronic music. Need proof? She has it, in the form of the Icon trophy at the 2023 EDMAs in Miami, becoming the first-ever female recipient.

Raised in a Greek household in Darwin, VASSY (born Vasiliki Karagiorgos) moved to the US in the early 2010s for a fresh start. The gamble paid off when she became the first Australian artist to hit Number One on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart with her track “We Are Young”. It’s one of eight Billboard chart leaders, including “Bad” (with David Guetta and Showtek), which has raced past one billion streams on YouTube alone.

Her Tiësto collaboration “Secrets” hit Number One in over 30 countries and collected more than two billion streams. “I want to inspire other people that you can do it, you can really follow your dreams. And not just in music, in anything,” she told Rolling Stone AU/NZ in 2022.

In 2024, VASSY collected her first platinum plaque from the National Music Publishers’ Association, for “Bad”; signed a new deal with Universal Music Publishing; and launched a new radio show, VOX Radio. New music has dropped in 2025, including her “BEG” cut with Dutch producer RSCL, and the BossAcoustics EP, which, she tells RS, “marks a new chapter in my artistic journey—one that feels like coming home.”—L.B.

When Nick Littlemore and Peter Mayes come together, you’d best step right back — lightning is about to strike. After having their minds enlightened at a colourful early rave, Littlemore and Mayes jumped right in. Their debut album from 1999, Sambanova, impacted the ARIA Top 40. That was just the start. A decade later, Elton John discovered their music and a project was formed. The result, 2012’s Good Morning to the Night, went to Number One in the UK. In 2021, at which point PNAU were a trio with the addition of Nick’s brother Sam Littlemore, their remix of Elton and Dua Lipa’s “Cold Heart” was a Number One smash everywhere.

Littlemore and Mayes found the time to launch a label, Lab78, and record as Teenager and Empire of the Sun, a group that, in 2009, was arguably Australia’s most popular outfit on the planet (they set the pace with four ARIA Awards that year). Led by Luke Steele of The Sleepy Jackson, Empire of the Sun cracked the Billboard Hot 100 with their debut single “Walking on a Dream”, and landed four straight ARIA Top 10 albums. PNAU has also collected multiple ARIA and AIR Awards.

There could be more where “Cold Heart” came from. “We ended up making 12 to 14 songs (with Elton John),” Nick Littlemore told this reporter. “It’s full of dance bangers.” —L.B.

If you giggled at Bill Clinton’s admission to smoking pot during his youth, but not inhaling, Paul Mac responded with “hold my beer.” As one half of Itch-E and Scratch-E (also known sometimes as Boo-Boo & Mace) alongside Andy Rantzen, producer Paul Mac did the unthinkable when, at the 1995 ARIA Awards, as he collected the trophy for Best Dance/Electronic Release, Mac thanked Sydney’s ecstasy dealers.

Winners are grinners and Mac got away with it. How so? Their ARIA-scooping album Itch-E Kitch-E Koo is a stone-cold classic, a complete journey with bangers, sunrise anthems, ambience, strange trips, and one of the outstanding pieces of music to hit our ears in the Nineties — “Sweetness and Light”, a tune that came in at Number Three on the ABC’s countdown of the best Australian songs of the decade. It could have gone higher.

Outside of Itch-E and Scratch-E, Paul Mac formed The Dissociatives with Daniel Johns, Stereogamous with Jonny Seymour, and continues to release and perform as a solo artist. 

Itch-E and Scratch-E have, at times, gone about their business with Sheriff Lindo (a.k.a. Nutcase), and an album of fresh tunes dropped in 2010, Hooray for Everything.

Has the ARIAs speech come back to haunt him? “I think that was the best career move I ever made,” he told this reporter in 2010. “I got in so much trouble for that. As soon as I got off the stage, everyone was just giving me horror faces, pointing the finger and going ‘tut tut’. Then it was written about in all the papers. I copped a lot of shit for that. I don’t care, I’m still proud of it. I meant every word. And I still kinda do, so fuck it.” —L.B.