“Whether consciously or unconsciously, my own creations focus on my identity and artistry,” JinxZhou tells Apple Music. “Mixing in other people’s work is like expanding into other sensory territory.” Hailing from Changsha, Hunan province, the rapper, DJ, and producer is a veteran of music reality shows, has worked on her craft in Los Angeles, and in 2024 launched the all-female crew SUBKISS. For her Lunar New Year DJ Mix, Zhou aims to foster a warm, festive atmosphere. “I wanted to revisit some old-feeling songs as a way to bid farewell to the past and welcome the new,” she says. “I didn’t limit myself to music from Asia, but found cultural fusion using seemingly unrelated songs that shared a similar sound.” Zhou’s eclectic picks include producers like Mura Masa, indie songwriters like The Dare, and a holiday remix of a Gorillaz hit—plus plenty of J-pop. Programming for the holidays represents a downshift for a DJ used to the harder, denser beats of the dance floor. “This playlist is more vivid and better suited to scenes of ordinary life,” she says. “I recently completed a fairly hardcore album, so I wanted to clean out my mind by playing with different devices like the relatively light-sounding OP-1, and seeing if I could make music that way.”