Sofi Tukker

Sofi Tukker make globe-trotting beats for international party people. Their moniker is a twist on the two members’ names, Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern, who met at Brown University in Rhode Island in 2014 when they performed on the same bill at an art gallery. Soon, they were fusing club rhythms informed by Halpern’s background in West African drumming with Hawley-Weld’s Portuguese-language vocals. With encouragement from dance-pop duo The Knocks, who’d heard Sofi Tukker’s demos, they then moved to New York to pursue music in earnest.Much of Sofi Tukker’s appeal stems from the duo’s unusual blend of influences. They’re literate: The title of 2016’s Soft Animals EP is borrowed from the Pulitzer-winning poet Mary Oliver, and the lyrics of 2014’s “Drinkee”, their Grammy-nominated debut single, are adapted from the Brazilian poet Chacal. They’re also spiritual: The hypnotic pull of “Drinkee” stems from Halpern’s study of Kundalini yoga chants, while the song’s sidewinding guitars nod to Maghrebi desert blues. Since then, they’ve continued to explore the realm of dance music beyond borders, in terms of genre as much as geography, zigzagging between club beats, electro-funk, tropical house, trance and further-flung styles like cumbia and Bolivian charango folk. But at the end of the day, it’s the duo’s effortless choruses—and Hawley-Weld’s voice, weightless yet full of character—that make them such compelling ambassadors for the utopian union of dance and pop.