Music

Wassup, Miami! And all you foreigners breathing our air. We here at Crossfade are covering all your Ultra Music Festival shenanigans. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t chronicle the adventures of the PLUR nation’s royal queen, Molly Casa of the 305. She’s that gorgeous monster stomping around in kandi…

What gets EDM-ers excited? Sometimes “bass makes bitches cum.” (Just ask these rumble-humping raver chicks.) Other times, a human chicken might be the thang that’ll get the party people hot. And at Ultra Music Festival, the beat freaks are undoubtedly the kinkiest. Just make the jump for Crossfade’s 15-photo recap…

Holy Effing Ship!!! Those three exclamation points signify three years for electronic dance music’s raddest four-day party cruise. (It ain’t just bad grammar or Internet-y hyperbole.) Coincidentally, though, we’re exactly that beat-freaking excited about the 2014 edition of Hard Events’ EDM humpfest at sea. Especially since it’s finally floating outta…

The end of any Ultra Music Festival weekend is when things start to get real. After three full days of dancing and pounding music, mostly in the sun, only the strongest make it to the end, and even they can get cranky. So while positive vibes ruled over 99 percent…

We’re starting to sound like a broken record. (Pun not intended. Every DJ uses Ableton these days anyway.) Hot Chip is easily one of the most influential electronic (or dance rock or indie electro or whatever you want to call it) acts of the past decade. They’re almost this generation’s…

Bras, ugh. They’re so constrictive! It’s no surprise that women often unclasp around the house, opting to let their ladies breathe and bounce freely, just the way evolutionary science intended. But in public, breasts are typically confined to two cups, held up by a couple of straps and an elastic…

15. Best Bieber At first we thought: “Holy shit! That’s Justin Bieber at Ultra! Wow! This is better than Madge’s crash (and burn) last year!” Alas! It was merely a cardboard likeness of our favorite pothead newbie. But for desperate Bieber fans like us, any Bieb’ll do. See also: -Ten…

Something really weird happened. We were walking into Ultra Music Festival, and just as we came around a corner, we saw a giant boombox blasting 808s and emitting smoke. We got closer to see what was up. Turns out, it was the UMF Radio stage, but it was overrun with…

The uhntz-uhntz hasn’t even died down. But just minutes after wrapping its six-day 2013 edition with Swedish House Mafia’s last show ever, Ultra Music Festival has already announced a plan for next year’s insane EDM extravaganza. “See you all next year at Ultra Music Festival 2014!” the fest’s organizers tweeted,…

Wanna prove your dedication to the EDM scene? Try a “Basshead” lip tattoo. Or dressing up like a grinning reptilian member of the “Pookie Monster Mafia.” Or stripping down on a daily basis to go swimming in a writhing sea of 150,000 sweaty human bodies. Even just surviving this UMF…

This year’s main stage at Ultra Music Festival has seemed particularly heavy on so-called “confetti house,” the lineup rife with marquee names from VIP-heavy megaclubs. But the (relatively) more underground sounds of dance music — or at least those not so concerned with encouraging bottle sales — lived on at…

After going all country music on Ultra 2013 this weekend, Avicii’s taking vacay for a day. (At least until it’s time to return to UMF tonight and “come, rave, love” one last time with his countrymen in SHM.) And it’s totally obvious where the Swede is sleeping and showering …..

How quickly some stars have ascended in the EDM boom. Just a few years ago, in 2009, Toronto-based producer Deadmau5 could be found at Ultra Music Festival on the live stage, essentially opening up for Simian Mobile Disco. Last night, though, trying to get the main stage to witness his…

Major Lazer shows are unlike anything else you’ll see at an EDM fest. The Diplo-led crew’s performances are an enthralling orgy of confetti-spraying machine guns, hyper-sexual dancing, and human-sized hamster balls, all set to a peculiar mixture of dancehall, dubstep, pop, and every other genre the always-restless Diplo feels like…

One of the great but frustrating things about Ultra Music Festival is it continually books interesting rising acts for its live stage while scheduling them in its earliest slots. This meant that yesterday, the second day of the second weekend, one-man electro-pop band Robert Delong and house revivalists Azari &…

With the rise of the ubiquitous Internet, street fashion trends rolled in, heavy and dark like a storm cloud, over the style world. Instead of dressing sorta like supermodels on the catwalk, we had to start wearing exactly whatever some fashion editor in Italy was sporting. There’s something so liberating…

With Lil Wayne just out of the hospital after a series of seizures and a Codeine relapse, no one’s fronting about the role drugs play in the world of rap. The EDM scene is also deep into intoxicants, and no one’s going to tell us otherwise. We spoke with rapper…

Sure, Ultra ends at midnight. And by the last day of the two-weekend fest, you may be tired and feel like sleeping in. Well, don’t. ‘Cause then you will miss all the killer daytime sets. And a ton of other awesome stuff. Like Crossfade’s 13 best reasons to wake up…

What are the odds of electro-mechanical machines (manufactured in France) descending upon Ultra Music Festival 2013 to enslave the EDM generation? We’d say the chances of a sudden and unsuspected robot invasion at UMF probably hover around 13 percent. Oh … You mean the likelihood of notoriously secretive and borderline…

Ultra Music Festival is a zoo. From land sharks to killer whales, pink flamingos to African zebras, UMF 2013 is starting to feel a lot like a World Wildlife Foundation fundraiser, complete with endangered species and cuddly critters. Sure, they’re inflatable. But try explaining that to someone rolling face. After…

We knew we were in for something special after speaking with Swedish progressive house DJ-producer Eric Prydz about Ultra Music Festival 2013. Shit, just having the aerophobic house master on this side of the pond is enough an occasion to plant your ass at UMF’s main stage at 7:50 p.m…