hook
70 tracksThe short, memorable idea a song is built to stick with you: a sung phrase, a riff, a synth line. A hook is designed for repetition and usually arrives early.
Performance
spoken word
9 tracks.
What it is
A vocal delivered as speech rather than song: talked, recited or half-sung with little or no melody. In electronic and post-punk music a flat, deadpan spoken voice over a beat can sound cool, ironic or confrontational.
Read more on WikipediaRelated concepts
vocoder
5 tracksA device that imposes the shape of a voice onto a synthesizer's sound, producing the robotic singing heard from Kraftwerk to Daft Punk.
Hear it in these tracks
Daft Punk
Episode 3, Nile Rodgers
Nile Rodgers tells his own story in the third of Daft Punk's Collaborators films, a warm, funny portrait of the guitarist whose rhythm runs through Random Access Memories.
Daft Punk
Episode 1, Giorgio Moroder
Giorgio Moroder opens Daft Punk's Collaborators films, remembering the Moog, the dance floor and the perfectionism of the two Frenchmen who brought him back into the studio for Random Access Memories.
Louisahhh
Like A Vice
A dark and pulsating techno track that closes Louisahhh's intentionally brutal 2017 EP A Trap I've Built, delving into desire, control and liberation.
Felix Da Housecat
Madame Hollywood (feat. Miss Kittin)
'Madame Hollywood' by Felix Da Housecat featuring Miss Kittin is an electroclash single that plays the glamour of stardom deadpan: a Chicago house producer's taut electro beat and a French voice that sounds bored by fame.
Klangkarussell
We Want Your Soul
'We Want Your Soul' is Klangkarussell's remix of Adam Freeland's 2003 anti-consumerist breakbeat single: the speech-synthesizer verses and Bill Hicks sample of the original, slowed into a long, hypnotic house groove on the album Netzwerk.
The Horrorist
One Night In New York City
'One Night In New York City' is The Horrorist's dark techno story of a naive suburban girl's night in the city, first released in 1996 on his own Things To Come label and a German dance number one in 2001, told in a cold spoken voice over a driving machine beat.
Sleaford Mods
Tweet Tweet Tweet
'Tweet Tweet Tweet' by Sleaford Mods is a gritty post-punk rant born on a dismal bus ride, aimed at people lost in their phones and at the politics of 2014 England, filmed here live for KEXP in 2023: one man pressing play, one man spitting fire.
Miss Kittin
Frank Sinatra
'Frank Sinatra' is one of the founding anthems of electroclash: Miss Kittin's deadpan spoken vocal over The Hacker's raw electro, a cool, satirical portrait of fame and excess that still fills dancefloors.
Louie Austen
One Night In Rio
'One Night In Rio' by Louie Austen is a tongue-in-cheek electro-lounge story from 2001: a Viennese hotel-bar crooner, then in his fifties, counting off a tour from Rio to LA to Moscow and complaining about a taxi, with backing singers echoing every line.