Sondr

Sondr’s Lorenzo Cosi and Yk Koi first met as hired guns in a London studio in 2015. They got their respective starts writing and producing for singers like Lana Del Rey and Ella Eyre, and the British duo’s own work slots into a similarly dramatic strain of dance pop. Sondr stepped up on their own for the first time with 2016’s “Surviving,” offering a perfectly balanced blend of tropical-house synths, folk-rock guitars, and pop toplines. Listeners who didn’t know any better might have assumed that they were Swedish, and they have continued to build on a sound steeped in a classically Scandinavian fusion of pop and EDM. Their songs fold together trap drums, sing-along choruses, nu-disco flash, and R&B sultriness over house music’s all-important four-to-the-floor beat. And while their high-tech productions are indisputably a product of their times, the duo isn’t afraid of a little retro flavor, such as a snippet of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” in 2020’s gently nostalgic “Stalker,” or the piano-house accents of the 2021 single “Raise the Roof.”