I was hypnotized watching the animatronic monkey outside of Club Retro Boom on Saturday night.
It was a long, exhausting week— make that a long, exhausting month— but I was happy to play an hour-long set to open Club Retro Boom’s Bowie vs. Bunbury party at Grand Star Jazz Club on Saturday night. I was even happier to get to stick around and dance to Filthy Rich and Vanish’s excellent sets at Club Retro Boom *and* catch up with a friend who I hadn’t seen in years. What a fun night!
Here’s the set list. It might be a little out of order because I was feeling super indecisive last night.
As always, Club Underground is happening at Grand Star Jazz Club on Friday night. I’ll be back on the decks on June 12 playing alongside Larry G. There’s no theme, so expect a mix of indie, Britpop, post-punk, darkwave, new wave and more from 9:30 p.m. until 2 a.m. Advance tickets are available online, but you can also get them at the door. Underground is 21+ and the Grand Star is located in Chinatown’s Central Plaza, next to the Bruce Lee Statue.
This is going to be a pretty busy weekend in Los Angeles, given that Pride is this weekend and the World Cup starts on Thursday. Keep reading for my recommendations for clubs, concerts and movie screenings happening in Los Angeles between Thursday, June 11 and Wednesday, June 17, 2026.
Accidental photo from the DJ booth, 5/29/26. (Pic: Liz O.)
I’ve never been super into Peggy Gou, but her “Energy” mix of Madonna’s new single, “I Feel So Free,” is incredible. It’s an ‘80s hiNRG throwback that works because it doesn’t sound like what Madonna was doing in that era, so it becomes this crazy speculative fiction mix, like imagine a 1984 where Pet Shop Boys and Madonna collabed and it was all produced by Bobby Orlando in between sessions with The Flirts and Divine. That’s what this Peggy Gou remix sounds like. Anyhow, the remix has been out for a couple weeks and I finally had the chance to play it last night. It was one of those now-or-never moments because I had just played “Blue Monday” and “Living on Video” and figured there wouldn’t be any other moment during the course of the night where a new banger that sounds like an old school jam would work.
Two other songs that I tried out for the first time last night are the Fcukers mix of the Angelé and Justice song “What You Want,” which worked really nicely in between new Slayyyter and old Daft Punk, and “Piss Artist,” which is honestly my favorite song on Gelli Haha’s album, Switcheroo. I love it because it’s the sort of NSFW song that you used to only hear in clubs- trust me when I tell you that “Fuck the Pain Away” and “Frank Sinatra” were not radio songs- and that’s a bit of a dying breed of music.
Anyhow, set list is below. Songs that are from the past two years are highlighted and (usually) link back to other references on the blog.
Next week is Interpol Nite at Club Underground. It’s going to be a vibe, so make plans to go. Advance tickets are online now.
View from the stage upstairs at Grand Star Jazz Club for Club Underground’s New Year’s Eve Party 2025/26 (Pic: Liz O.)
Last night, my friend asked if I had a song for the new year. I didn’t. I thought about it, though, and answered Kneecap “H.O.O.D.,” more for the band than for the specific song. They’re the group I would consider the MVP of 2025, one that has had a lot of bullshit thrown their way just for speaking out against the genocide that so much of the world has watched transpire on their phones. Yet, they’ve stuck to their principles and refuse to be silenced. They’re the real deal in a time of fakers and I appreciate that so much. That’s the kind of energy we need this year.
Anyhow, I played upstairs at the Grand Star for Underground’s New Year’s Eve party. Super cool crowd. Thank you all for being there, especially on a rainy L.A. night. It was great to overhear someone in the crowd saying, “I love this song…it’s Confidence Man” when “Gossip” came on. Even better to hear from people who came up to the booth because you were excited to hear “Juicebox” or “¿Porqué te vas?” or some other song that I can’t recall right now. Hope to see more of all of you in 2026. Set list is below. The 2025 songs link to other mentions on this blog.
HLLLYH plays The Smell’s 28th Anniversary party on Friday, January 2, 2026. (Photo: Liz O.)
If your New Year’s Resolution is to get out of the house more often, you might as well start now because there are some very cool events happening in Los Angeles for this first weekend of 2026, including The Smell’s weekend-long anniversary bash, the L.A. Fights Back benefit show with Sextile, Automatic and Choir Boy, a David Bowie-themed skate party, film tributes to Bowie, David Lynch, Rob Reiner and Udo Kier, plus lots more. Keep reading for the breakdown.
Want to guess where Sextile’s album, Yes, Please, landed on this best of 2025 list?
To be honest, the album I listened to the most in 2025 was actually my top pick from last year, Romance by Fontaines D.C. I also spent far too much time listening to two 2024 albums that I didn’t hear until this year, Fine Art by Kneecap and Humble As the Sun by Bob Vylan. We spend a lot of time putting together our year-end lists, but the truth is that time is irrelevant. The right album will hit you when you need to hear it and that could be on the day it’s released or five years later.
Still, I think we should shout out stellar new albums, lest we collectively fall deeper into an algorithmically-induced nostalgia hole. And there was a lot of fantastic music released this year, much more than what’s included on this list. I doubt I heard more than the smallest fraction of good shit released in 2025. So, consider this just the start of a list that will never really be complete.
I used to think that the 21st century didn’t really begin until 9/11, that this was the one event that set the course for the years to follow. Now, I’m willing to admit that I was wrong. Maybe, the 21st century actually began at the end of 1999 with the WTO protests. In late November of the final year of the ‘90s, some 40,000 people hit the streets of Seattle to shut down the World Trade Organization’s conference in the city. They were people from varying backgrounds, including environmental activists, union members and farmers. Those of us who remember the protests only from watching the news may hazily recall reports of “blah blah blah anarchists, blah blah blah Starbucks.” However, a new documentary, WTO/99, drops viewers in the middle of the scene for four days of protests and, in the process, tells a very different story.
Back in 1984, Ultravox released The Collection, a best of compilation that brought together 14 singles released over the course of four years. If you’re new to the band, The Collection is a good place to start because it contains the jams of the band’s Midge Ure era, like “Dancing With Tears in My Eyes,” “Reap the Wild Wind” and, of course, “Vienna.” It was my first Ultravox record, pulled from a used bin in a San Fernando Valley record store for $2.99 back in the late 1990s. Last week, a deluxe edition of The Collection was released and, if you’re already a fan, you probably will want this in your collection.
You may have danced to some of these songs in the new wave vs. darkwave room at Klub Nocturno (Pic: Liz O.)
After writing this list of the top 10 bangers for 2025, it’s clearer to me that the sound of the dance floor is changing. The songs that have been working well at the clubs are the ones that don’t follow the strict vibe code of Spotify playlists. Instead, we have “northern soul, but make it Britpop,” “post-punk by way of Piper at the Gates of Dawn” and “Irish grime for the moshpit.” None of those songs would make sense together on an algorithmically-generated playlist, but they all made it into the DJ sets I played at Underground just this past Friday.
At least amongst those who regularly leave the house, there are still people who want to dance to music that they don’t already know, that doesn’t hold nostalgic value and doesn’t quite fit into the narrow parameters of genre. That gives me a bit of hope in the midst of the new AI era of music that has been thrust upon us.
All of the songs here are ranked by how I’ve seen crowds respond to them at my own gigs, primarily at Underground, where I’m DJing on New Year’s Eve, and/or in the darkwave room at Nocturno, where I’ll be playing on December 20. The only “metrics” I’ve used here are eyeballing the size of the crowd and the enthusiasm of their dancing. TBH, enthusiasm is more important than size, so if there are fewer people dancing, but they’re screaming out every word of the song, that matters. Anyhow, what I’m getting at is that I trust my ears and eyes more than any music or social media platform that is designed to be gamed.
Frankly, I’m impressed by how many of you know all the words to “H.O.O.D.”
Thank you to everyone who made it out to Underground last night and for all the birthday wishes. I’ve always been pretty low maintenance about birthdays just because mine competes with Christmas parties (and competed with finals back when I was in school). So, I learned the best thing to do is book a DJ gig the weekend of my birthday and say, “I’m playing here, if you want to come by and say hi.” I’m always pleasantly surprised by who I see. Anyhow, outside of this playlist and one really short and shaky video for the ‘gram, I don’t have much documentation, so you’ll just have to trust me when I saw it was a vibe.
As usual, the set list is below. Songs released in 2025 are in bold and link back to other references to the band on Beatique. And, before I sign off, tickets for New Year’s Eve at Club Underground are already available on Dice and Eventbrite. Two floors of indie, Britpop, darkwave, post-punk dancing all night. Get your tickets asap.
