SLANDER

Derek Andersen and Scott Land aka the Los Angeles-originating DJ duo Slander cooked up a name for their singular trailblazing hybrid sound, "heaven trap," which combines the euphoria of trance with the percussive bite of the hip-hop sub-genre. Having met as students at the University of California, Irvine, and later graduating in music production, the pair set about honing their style at a local level, playing gigs for their college friends, before launching themselves on the scene in 2014 with a well-received remix of Showtek's "We Like to Party." The following year, they released an EP called Nuclear Bonds created with regular collaborator Nghtmre for Diplo's world-famous Mad Decent label, and in 2016 performed at the EDM extravaganza Tomorrowland alongside Nghtmre and Snails. The Dilapidation Celebration EP with Kayzo surfaced in 2017 and The Headbangers Ball for Canadian label Monstercat followed in 2018, with the duo dropping an array of subsequent singles including "Love Is Gone" (2019), "Feeling Gud" (2020), and 2021's "Gravity" and "Miss You" (2021). They unleashed their debut album Thrive in 2022, anchored by the focus single “Nothing Hurts Like Goodbye" before shifting direction slightly to join forces with Bring Me the Horizon and Black Bear for the "Wish I Could Forget" single in 2023.