Alesso

When the world of EDM was supersizing in the 2010s, Alesso went deeper, not bigger. Turning his attention from floor-filling grooves to soul-stirring hooks, he’d become one of the chief architects of dance music’s pop takeover. Born Alessandro Renato Rodolfo Lindblad in 1991, the Stockholm native caught the ear of Swedish House Mafia’s Sebastian Ingrosso with his self-titled debut EP in 2010. He quickly notched a hit alongside his mentor with 2011’s “Calling (Lose My Mind),” pairing a soaring topline from OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder with electrifying progressive house. It was an early example of pop/EDM crossover, and while such fusions soon became common, no one else had Alesso’s finesse. After perfecting the mixture of indie guitars with neon synths on 2015’s epic “Heroes (We Could Be),” featuring Tove Lo, he would go on to team up with Maroon 5, Florida Georgia Line, and even Taiwan’s Jolin Tsai, always testing the limits of his sound. But Alesso never turned his back on dance music. In 2019 he opted for hypnotic club fare on the PROGRESSO VOLUME 1 mixtape, and on 2021’s Armin van Buuren collab “Leave a Little Love,” he paired ’80s electro-funk with heads-down deep house. In fact, Alesso tells Apple Music, the first time he heard house music, it was love at first listen. “It was so different from everything you heard on the radio,” he says. “My gut was telling me, one day this is going to take off.” Sure enough, it did—and Alesso keeps taking it higher.