Australia’s overlooked hyperpop, EDM and dance scene

You already know Australia can send electronic music overseas. Some of the biggest names in the global scene – Flume, RÜFÜS DU SOL, Dom Dolla and FISHER – have already proven how far it can travel. Festival culture here is massive, especially in the big cities, so there’s a clear path for this sound to go global. But that big-room, export-ready sound isn’t the whole genre, just the more popular one.

Away from the festival circuit, the scene splinters. You find it in group chats, on socials, then at smaller shows that sell out before you even know to look. That lack of a distinct structure is what allows the scene to avoid predictability.

Elsewhere, like the US or the UK, you can hear a sound quickly get flattened. It takes off, starts to get recognised, then shows up later with a slightly different feel. But it still has those distinctive Auto-Tuned vocals, the glossy curated visuals and the same calculated desire to go viral. Add in plagiarism discourse and the occasional industry plant allegation, and the whole thing starts to feel less like a movement and more like a content strategy.

Australia’s electronic underground, in contrast, doesn’t have a strict aesthetic, visual language or fixed boundary holding it all together. Instead, artists pull from everywhere – internet music, club culture, indie, ambient and even Midwest emo.

We already know mainstream Australian electronic music can go global, but the underground shows what it sounds like when it’s making no concessions. You hear it in the artists coming out of it – or more accurately, the ones no one outside has bothered to listen to yet.

Ninajirachi makes music that you can only describe as computer-esque rave nostalgia, while Donatachi creates bubblegum euphoria for the club.

Basically, Ninajirachi is falling in love with your computer while Donatachi is falling in love on the dancefloor.

Then there are the producers who don't even give you an easy way in. ethn reis, 22mackie and xo don’t sit in one genre.

ethn reis jumps between dance music, hyperpop, rap and dubstep – committing to none of them.

22mackie sits in a more understated space – fully self-produced, pulling from UK garage, indie electronica and hyperpop.

xo's music feels less like stepping into a room and more like stepping out onto the balcony: airy, trance-adjacent and emotionally loaded.

Even the artists who sit closer to hyperpop don't behave the way they're supposed to.

2charm turn it into something chaotic, physical and slightly ridiculous – so over-the-top it loops back into being unironically good.

AGONY take a different approach, pulling hyperpop somewhere colder and sleazier.

The further out you go, the sweatier it gets. Lucy Lamb, BBIANCA and daine blur the line between club music, indie sleaze and good old pop.

Lucy Lamb crafts a hazier sound that’s more shadowy after-hours than a club at 10 pm. Still glamorous, just darker and more haunting.

BBIANCA turns pop into a brattier, glossier, more flirtatious strain of hyperpop, oozing with Tumblr-era aesthetic and Y2K excess.

daine sits somewhere between everything – emo, hyperpop, punk, glitch – pulling from Midwest emo and hardcore scenes to make music that feels more personal.