Electro-dance-pop is all the rage right now. Unless you haven’t been paying attention, the music that’s been huge abroad and had fans here in the States albeit underground, has finally exploded into the mainstream psyche of music listeners. You can credit that to the growth of satellite radio or young people’s desire to eschew conscious music for the feel-good qualities of dance music. Regardless, electropop looks like it’s here to stay and one of the new bands to thank for that is Swedish trio Miike Snow.

The thing that separates these guys from any other electro act is that their sound can fit in nearly form of indie/electronic music. Some have called them indie rock, indie-pop, psychedlic pop, synthpop, but regardless of the labeling, it’s music you can dance to and enjoy. Formed in 2007, the trio is comprised of Swedish production duo Bloodshy & Avant (Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg) and Andrew Wyatt. Bloodshy & Avant may not have the same brand name recognition of other producers and songwriters, but they’ve been behind dance pop hits of Britney Spears (including her song “Toxic”), Madonna, Kylie Minogue and a slew of others including multiple remixes. Wyatt met the duo while they were all collaborating on a Spears album. Who would have thought that the one time Queen of Pop would have spawned one of the groups at the forefront of the electropop movement?

Legend behind the name “Miike Snow” allegedly came from one of their friends named Mike Snow (he must be pretty memorable), with the spelling of “Miike” coming from the Japanese film director Takashi Miike. They released their debut in 2009 with songs like “Animal,” “Black & Blue” and “Sylvia” winning them fans all over the globe. They’ve also managed to retain the producing career, in fact, it’s grown their profile to the point where they are consistently called upon to remixes for big name artists.

The release of their second album, Happy To You, as we noted, was a little disappointing, but that’s more due to the high expectations that their debut cast upon them. But even so, they used 2012 to build their live show, which has become one of the hardest tickets to get. Their show mixes strobe lights and other theatrics with electronica, all of which makes for a wild dance party where people lose their shit.

Miike Snow is one of the exciting new bands out there today. It doesn’t matter what theory you subscribe to or how you interpret their music since most can agree that it’s pretty damn good.

Photo (c) Daniela Montelongo