The Juan MacLean

If the explosion of American indie dance in the early 2000s was defined by a wave of rockers trading their guitars for synths, few artists were more representative of that evolution than The Juan MacLean. One of the first acts signed to James Murphy’s DFA Records, the duo of John MacLean (a former member of Providence punks Six Finger Satellite) and Nancy Whang (also a member of Murphy’s LCD Soundsystem) came together in 2002 with a scrappy electro-disco sound that blossomed into ecstatic dance-punk on their 2005 debut album, Less Than Human. Even as they continued to refine their approach on records like 2009’s The Future Will Come and 2014’s In a Dream, folding in influences like Krautrock and R&B, the project’s singles and DJ mixes (sometimes duo efforts, sometimes by MacLean alone) increasingly fell under the sway of deep house and melodic techno. And as MacLean’s interest in the therapeutic power of psychedelics has deepened, The Juan MacLean’s music has continued to push dance toward the outer limits.