MillionYoung: "Replicants"

Everyone’s had a chance to familiarize themselves with this kind of music now, right? After all, Neon Indian and Passion Pit now find their recordings on Frat Party playlists and college bar jukeboxes nationwide. But this never made much sense to me. The coated vibes of chillwave’s dancier offerings like, say, those of Neon Indian do not lend well to bumpin’ and grindin’, and the sugary sweet yelping of Passion Pit’s Manners (2009) just seems, well…lame. Party-going-20-somethings have waited eagerly for someone to fill this void.

Florida’s Mike Diaz—aka MillionYoung—aspires to solve this problem. The title track from his forthcoming debut full length, “Replicants” mixes the best ingredients of Psychic Chasms and Manners together in a salad bowl of hearty, organic dance pop. Thumping bass riffs collide with plink-y guitar and keyboard rhythms into a track that owes much to its chillwave forbearers while being stunningly well suited for booty shaking. Diaz even finds an opportunity to throw in lyrics that—unlike most of his peers—do not seem totally meaningless: “No, I’m never gonna find another love like this again…” might not be Kerouac, but at least there are no child choruses. With “Replicants,” MillionYoung strikes a balance that floats above the anti-chill backlash and brings hipsters and frat bros back to the same dance floor, proving that this much written about—and often maligned—micro genre can mature and progress as well as any other.