Dance Music

Dan Snaith is best known under his pseudonym Caribou, where he makes deeply emotional, smartly crafted electronic music. A master programmer and instrumentalist, Snaith has continued to expand his sound since his early work as Manitoba, crafting luscious tunes that reveal a curious mind at work. A few years ago, however, Snaith started to get nostalgic for the early sounds of techno and house culture, and harnessed that energy through a project called Daphni. He'd been frustrated with the new breed of pop-friendly EDM, and wondered whether the genre's success had ruined the music.

Nominations for the 40th American Music Awards were announced Tuesday morning, and while Grammy voters probably won't care about the resurgence in boybands or the year's most annoyingly ubiquitous single (OK, call me, maybe ) - that sort of thing is right in the wheelhouse of one of the music industry's oddest popularity contests. Nicki Minaj and Rihanna dominate with four nods apiece, while Drake, Justin Bieber, Maroon 5, One Direction and Usher follow with three. Carly Rae Jepsen and One Direction will battle for new artist of the year, along with J. Cole, fun. and Gotye.

Among the English artists conspicuously missing from the London Olympics' closing ceremony - the so-called "Symphony of British Music" that featured performances by the Who, One Direction and dozens more - was Ellie Goulding, whose 2010 electro-pop debut, "Lights," topped U.K. charts before breaking here this past summer. But maybe Goulding was excluded because she'd already taken part in another era-defining event across the pond: the wedding last year of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

Last September, the DJ and electronica artist Adam Bravin (who performs as Adam 12) spun a set of hip-hop and soul at an Obama fundraising event at the House of Blues in West Hollywood. It was his second time DJ'ing a campaign event, and Obama's staff wanted him to come backstage to meet the president. But on the way to the receiving line, a guest spilled a cup of coffee all over his white clothes. "The only extra shirt I had in my car was one for a friend's drug charity that said, 'The only coke I do is diet,'" Bravin recalled.

SÃO PAULO, Brazil - The MTV Music Awards in Brazil had until recently been the domain of tinny pop and smiling boy bands. But last year, one of the show's stars took the stage and unexpectedly delivered a set of rap bars through a deadly serious face: We are the debunkers of Carnaval/ Runaway slaves on digital drums/ The phoenixes of Ash Wednesday/ The Landless Workers Movement of the social networks Emicida, now...

Starting tonight, Swedish DJ and producer Avicii commandeers the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium for a three-day stand of his ethereal, pulsing dance music with a major new live setup. By any standard, it's a landmark concert series in the 23-year-old's career, a victory lap that comes after releasing one of the year's biggest EDM singles, a Madonna collaboration and some unexpected indie accolades .  But these concerts are also a sign that he's made a soft landing after the first nerve-racking burst of the electronic-dance-music bubble in America.

Say you're a young electronic music fan, whose entry point into the genre was a David Guetta pop production or Skrillex's face-shearing bass drop festivals. Say you get your hands on “ Electrospective, ” a new compilation of electronic music culled from the vaults of EMI that spans the genre's 50-year history, and cue its first track -- the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's original theme to “Doctor Who.” You might say, “Good Lord, what is this?” And that reaction would be the point of “Electrospective.” “There's an entire generation whose access point to electronic music is Skrillex, and they need to know the contributors that got us here,” said Jason Bentley, the music director at KCRW-FM (89.9)

In late July, after playing a sold-out show at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, DJ Kaskade headed down the street to play an intimate after-party at a nightclub called Exchange L.A. There he electrified electronic dance music fans with an entirely different set featuring an old-school mash-up of deep house and tech house. The scene was exactly what Exchange L.A. is becoming known and celebrated for since partnering in June with Insomniac, which produces and promotes some of the largest and most influential EDM concerts in the country, including the massive Electric Daisy Carnival.

The cavernous dance club in downtown L.A. is hopping, and the weekend is still a day away. The club is ordinarily a hotbed of thumping house music, but tonight, the headliner - Houston-born jazz pianist and bandleader Robert Glasper - is switching things up. Behind a bank of keyboards, Glasper leads his quartet through a restless swirl of searching piano melody, causing the crowd to sway under the hazy colored lights. As the song gathers into focus, one musician begins repeating an unmistakable, 40-year-old refrain, his voice shaded by electronics: "A love supreme….

This post has been corrected. Please see note at the bottom for details. On Tuesday, the Obama campaign released a new Web ad touting its positive relationships within the world of electronic dance music. But over at Spin , noted dance-music critic Philip Sherburne points out that one side effect of the boom in EDM in Las Vegas casino-clubs is a windfall for at least one major Republican donor. Wynn Resorts Limited, which counts the Wynn and Encore hotels in its stable, has become one of the major players in EDM's conquest of Vegas.