Pump Up the Jam: Summer DJs

The remix maestro who is Viceroy got his humble start DJ’ing one night a week at a club in Rome as a study abroad student self-taught on the Ableton sequencer—a complicated endeavor—and since then, has carved himself a spot in the beach dance party world by giving R&B and hip hop songs warm, feel-good undertones. Someone may be mixing his stuff someday: The Next Escape, the teaser from his forthcoming EP, kicked off summer, and his current North American tour.

Get a feel for his vibe with: the “Remixes” mixtape.

Location: San Francisco, CA

Followers: 8254

The Australian duo has a knack for pulling together sounds that wouldn’t obviously mix—like real news clips and the top singles from the same eras. Their series of Decades mixes are unmissable, but their own albums are just as good. Though they hadn’t planned to release their own tracks, after four years of mixing, they had enough original work, and they got into the game themselves. Now, they’re touring and collaborating with everyone from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to Reggie Watts.

Get a feel for their vibe with: the 1980s “Decades” mixtape.

Location: Sydney, Australia

Followers: 51k

We have an unlikely champion of halcyon 80s Americana in Marty Bell, a Swedish creative fountain who also runs sunglass brand Tens. Poolside.fm is an “infinity pool” channel of commercials, music videos and movie scenes from the 80s stripped of their audio and set to synthy pop and modern electronic remixes. The two aren’t stylistically so opposite, it turns out, thanks to expert pairings from Marty and his partner Grant. The two just launched a free Poolside app, just in time for summer bbqs.

Get a feel for his vibe with: Mam, “Talking Box.”

Location: Edinburgh, Scotland and Glasgow, UK

Followers: 23.4k

Last we counted, we have over 320 remixes from RAC—it’s a DJ collective, but most of the tracks are the genius of André Allen Anjos. Whether intentional, remixing of-the-moment songs is a brilliant strategy: you get exposure (from hitching your wagon to someone else’s, like Lana Del Rey, ODESZA, Miguel and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and when your own album comes out, people want to hear it. One non-musical reason we love him: his dream collaboration is with Graceland-era Paul Simon (a nugget from his great Reddit AMA).

Get a feel for his vibe with: “Back of The Car“ (video directed by GIRLS’ Alex Karpovsky and writer Teddy Blanks, extra cool-crew points).

Location: Portland, OR

Followers: 20k

Not to be confused with the feed above, Poolside’s different in some big ways—two friends based in Los Angeles making their own music in addition to “casually decadent” lengthy mixes. Even their names evoke that #daytimedisco feel: Filip NIkolic and Jeff Paradise. Get a feel for their original tracks with 2012’s “Next to You.”

Get a feel for their vibe with: the “Contact High” mixtape, released last month.

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Followers: 6179