!! OMG, a Q&A with XKYLAR !!

Sometimes, when you find yourself at the door of the party, with a full smoke machine fogging up your path, all that can guide you is the sound of thumping getting louder and louder. As you get closer and the music becomes clearer, the message is simple; it’s time to lose it all on the dance floor. That feeling, a rush of adrenaline and hair spinning in excitement, reverberates through LA singer/songwriter/producer/DJ XKYLAR’s latest EP Why is Nobody Dancing? (stream or purchase it here).

Inspired by the pitfalls of nightlife and confusion about the state of club culture, XKYLAR’s new EP asks us what we’ve been all asking ourselves: Why isn’t anyone moving on the dance floor?

XKYLAR, in many ways, answers her own question with sharp sounds inspired by bloghouse and an electroclash indie sleaze fusion, creating her brand of “shameless house.”

We spoke with the artist about what the dancefloor means to her and the art of letting go through dance.

Read the full OMG.BLOG Q&A with XKYLAR after the jump!

OMG.BLOG: So, what are you feeling right now? What’s going through your head?

XKYLAR: I’m really excited. I think this some of the best music I’ve ever made and I’ve put so much love and effort into this project. It’s because I’m doing visuals for almost every song, I’m editing all of them and… it’s been a lot of work.

Finally, releasing it all is exciting but scary, just because I feel so strong about it. I finally have this project that I feel people are going to gravitate towards. I’ve had people be excited about a song, or people hitting me up being like, “I can’t wait for the drop.”

I’m always like, “Oh my god, thank you!” So it makes me a little more nervous, you know?

That’s so valid! Especially when there are so many eyes on it. Like, “Wow this is really happening!” I feel like we are in a particular era of sound that you are honing in on, particularly with “Why Is Nobody Dancing.”  There’s the whole conversation about the dance floor being dead or what’s happening to the dance floor…What’s your take on this?

I obviously feel like people aren’t dancing as much, but it’s more of like a conversation people are having on the Internet where everyone’s like, “Why is nobody dancing?”

But when I go out, it’s my own experience where I’m like, “Okay, why is no one dancing?” Why am I the only one at this party trying to like dance and have fun. I’ve always been the type of person that loves to dance, I don’t even need to be fucked up. I’m just like dancing all the time when I go out.

Why can’t people let go? In the past ten years, I do feel that just because of phones, people are so much more, you know, worried about the way they look and the way they’re being perceived. When I was growing up, I would go on Tumblr and look at party photos and see how fun they were. I kind of wanted that. But then, growing up and  going to those actual parties, it was so different.

Yeah, I get that…

It’s an interesting conversation.

But then, it’s about finding the place where people are having fun and finding your friends that want to go dance, and that’s the whole ethos of the project to me. It doesn’t matter if people aren’t dancing, as long as I’m there, and as long as the music’s good, and as long as my friends are there. As long as I find the people that want to, that’s what matters.

It is interesting how of the times it feels like, and when Charli [XCX] posted about the dance floor being dead, I’d already known [my] whole album concept by that time. I was pretty much done with it, and so I was just like, “Oh my god, please don’t have the name of her album be ‘the dance floor’s dead.’”

I know what you mean. It’s so funny because when Brat came out, there was a whole shift of people getting into dance music because it was getting more mainstream and coming to clubs. Paying a lot of money to go to clubs and then there was after like people got tired of the album, there was that dryness in the air. Oh, now no one wants to go to the club anymore, because it was like a moment in time.

But I think particularly when I’m listening to your sound, it reminds me of so much of what we wanted to see come out of electronica or even elements of bloghouse. So it’s really exciting to hear your music being produced like that. 

I wasn’t old enough to experience bloghouse and indie sleaze, but I grew up listening to that, and I still do listen to digitalism and Simeon Mobile Disco. All these bands from that era of electronic music. So to me, when I’m making music, it is very nostalgic of that time. But I also want it to exist in a modern space, and I think that is where a lot of my inspiration comes from is this electroclash resurgence.

I’ve been making electroclash for a couple years now, it’s what I love listening to and what I love making, and I think it’s really cool that like there’s now starting to be a resurgence of other artists doing it too, and I think it’s just because there’s this nostalgia for like a time that we weren’t able to experience. You know what I mean? The music is so good from that era.

I love really heavy dance music, and to me, I would listen to those songs and just dance in my bedroom like it didn’t matter if I was in a club or like my house. It’s just about making music that feels good and makes people want to dance and kind of feels unserious in a way.

The whole project is just about dancing, nightlife, and having fun. Initially, I was like, “Maybe I need a deeper song to be emotional.” But you know what? This is what this project is. It’s just, whatever is going on in my life or how sad I was, I would just be able to throw on some bloghouse dance record and be in my bedroom.

“Everything’s going to be okay” kind of vibe.

I was like, “I’m the hottest bitch ever.” I was like literally 12. Girl, you’re not hot. What are you talking about!

Even the process of making this EP and putting this together, because you said it’s about nightlife and wanting to dance, just going out and having all these like experiences with yourself… Did you ever go out and then come back and go, “Fuck! I have to write about this.”

The whole project kind of started from this idea because I had gone out to a couple parties, and I was just like, “What is literally going on in Los Angeles? Why is nobody dancing?” The inspiration for “Parties in LA,” well, there are two parties in particular that I went to where Flying Lotus was DJing, and he was so insanely good.

Me, my boyfriend, and my friend were dancing, just having the time of our lives. I was looking around, and no one was dancing. There was probably a party of 300 people and there were literally six people on the dance floor. It was an insane experience. I’ve seen Flying Lotus like four times in concert, so to be able to be at a party that he was DJing and absolutely ripping a set, I was like this is crazy that we’re the only ones having fun.

I went to an influencer-type party and Boys Noize was DJing. Boys Noize is like one of my favorite DJs ever, and he was like tearing it down, and I was the only person dancing. Just dancing by myself. That’s kind of what inspired the concept of songs like “Parties in LA” and “Why is Nobody Dancing?”.

Around that, I feel like it just formed the rest of the project. What is happening to party culture? Also, I don’t want to have a negative outlook on dance culture, and I think that’s also important to me. I think most of the songs are about how people deep down want to dance and want to have fun, but it’s finding the spaces where that still exists, and finding the people that are willing to.

Do you feel like there’s a little too much “shame culture”? You talked about phones, and how they are ever present, but do you feel there’s too much shame? Or even there’s maybe a loss of being like messy in a beautiful way that we’re missing out on? 

I don’t think you can be as messy as you used to, but I don’t even know if that’s actually true. I think it’s just the way we perceive it to be.

I know that I’m a lot more self-conscious when I go dancing or I’m on a dance floor, and I’m sometimes like when I’m with friends, I even get more self-conscious than if I’m by myself. It’s because I’ll sometimes like to go out and I’ll like to lose my friends and just dance on the dance floor alone.

There is sometimes the idea of being perceived or being judged, like something that holds you back internally without even realizing it. Now,  we’re on our phones, we’re constantly being judged. I mean, even as an artist, I’m so much more self-conscious now if I post something or say something. Is someone going to have something to say about this? And that’s such an interesting thing. I think that there is a little bit more of that judgment in L.A., just because everyone here is trying to be something. So there’s a lot of, “Why is she doing that?”

I don’t really love that. I feel like this isn’t to hate on L.A., it’s just my experience because I’m from here and I’ve grown up here. I go to other cities and I don’t experience the same thing.

It’s like… You’re allowed to.

Yeah, I just feel like messiness is kind of going away and it’s also just like, “Okay, maybe I still want to be messy sometimes.” For me, I want to make a dance record because I love dancing.

Thinking about your visualizers and the aesthetic that you’re bringing with this release, what are your inspirations? Is it from your personal experience, like the music itself?

For “Why is Nobody Dancing?”, I wanted it to be a kind of heavy contrast, where it’s me DJing in random places that don’t really make sense. I did a scene where it’s me in a doctor’s office and I’m DJing, and it’s me at a mechanic or me at a laundromat.

It’s this idea of like, “Why is nobody dancing?”, but it’s clearly in places like no one would ever be dancing? Yeah, you know it’s kind of a joke on it. For the actual EP rollout, I used my old apartment that I grew up in, that I spent the pandemic in. Side note, I ended up getting mold poisoning, and the owner hasn’t sold it yet. So I asked if I could use it for this shoot and for free. I decorated it like an L.A. party place, in every room I set decorated and found stuff to decorate for each song.

For the main room, I built out a living room space, and I literally went to Habitat for Humanity, Goodwill,  anywhere I could find to decorate this whole ass living room for $150.

It turned into a house party vibe. So then, I shot four of the visualizers in there with different setups. It’s kind of cool because to me it just captures an L.A. house party in a way, and my own experience living in L.A., because it’s also like a really personal place to me.

I think traditionally I’ve gone for really bright, loud colors, and I think that I was gravitating towards doing something that would be more indie sleaze for this project. But then, I just came up with this idea, and I’ve just been really inspired by more scenic things. There’s  this photo series where Taylor Hill is in a bathing suit. She’s in this vintage house, and there’s a grandma sitting down. The whole family is eating dinner, and she’s just posing in this bathing suit, in this pageant look.

Oh yes! The one with the couch and the whole family sitting on it?

Yes! Jorgos! It’s by Jorgos Lathamos for V Magazine. I saw this photo and thought, I need to be in this vibe for the project. I just love the cinematicness of it and that made me lean into a more vintage-inspired house party aesthetic.

When you were set dressing and doing all the prep stuff, were you pulling from nostalgia or from things that were happening at house parties right now? Or was it just creating the ideal house party?

I was more so looking for this ’90s aesthetic. I wanted it to feel a bit more nostalgic of a place. The whole project kind of screams nostalgia, it also deals with what adulthood is now versus what I thought it was as a kid. I thought I was going to go out every night, I thought it was going to be crazy, I thought I was going to be in the club. I think that is true about adulthood, but its not the same.

How it was supposed to be.

I mean, yeah, regardless it’s funny because I love L.A., even though I think its so easy to hate on L.A. as a party culture because there’s so many influencer events. But I think there are so many great people in L.A. and there’s a world of nightlife here, just not on the surface.

—Q&A by Rhea Singh (@cnt____mag)

XKYLAR’s EP Why is Nobody Dancing? is out now. Stream or purchase it here. Follow XKYLAR here.

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