Electronic music has always had a complicated relationship with nostalgia. A familiar melody or old-school sound can immediately pull listeners backward, but the best releases do more than simply remind us of what came before. They find a way to make those sounds feel relevant again.
That idea runs through several of our August selections.
This month’s Tempo Setter 7 brings together dubstep pioneers revisiting pieces of their own history, long-awaited IDs finally escaping the vault, a Y2K pop classic rebuilt for drum & bass, and newer producers continuing to push bass music into stranger territory.
As always, these selections are unranked. They are simply seven August releases that kept finding their way back into our rotation.
Flux Pavilion, Freestylers & Belle Humble – “Cracks Begin To Show”
Released August 7 via Never Say Die Records
There are few names more inseparable from dubstep’s rise than Flux Pavilion.
Tracks like “I Can’t Stop,” “Bass Cannon” and “Got 2 Know” helped soundtrack an era when dubstep was rapidly pushing out of underground spaces and onto festival stages around the world. More than a decade later, Flux continues to prove that longevity does not require freezing your sound in the era that made you famous.
“Cracks Begin To Show” might be one of the clearest examples yet.
The new single reaches all the way back to Freestylers and Belle Humble’s “Cracks,” which Flux famously remixed in 2010. Rather than simply repackaging that remix, the 2026 release is presented as a new recording of the composition, bringing Flux Pavilion, Freestylers and Belle Humble together under one billing. It also arrives through the newly active Never Say Die Records, which returned to releasing music this summer after a four-year hiatus.
Listening to the 2010 remix beside “Cracks Begin To Show” makes Flux’s evolution almost impossible to miss.
The foundation is instantly nostalgic, but the new version has considerably more depth, weight and dimensionality. Flux’s modern sound design fills spaces that the older production technology simply could not, while still preserving enough of that unmistakable early-dubstep character to transport longtime listeners straight back to the genre’s golden-era rise.
That balance is what makes the track special. Flux Pavilion’s understanding of composition and structure has grown alongside his production arsenal, but he has never completely abandoned the musical DNA that made his work identifiable in the first place.
This was our favorite track of August.
GRiZ – “Sunshine”
Released August 28 via GRiZ LLC
Since returning to the road, GRiZ has wasted little time reminding the electronic world how much space he occupies when fully active.
His 2026 run has included a headline slot at Electric Forest, a top-billed performance at Bonnaroo and his two-night GRiZTRONICS event at the Gorge alongside Subtronics.
But “Sunshine” predates this current run by years.
The track first surfaced during GRiZ’s Triple Rainbow event in 2022 and remained a sought-after live ID for four years, resurfacing in 2026 sets at places like EDC Mexico, Bonnaroo and the Gorge before finally receiving an official release.
And it sounds exactly like the title suggests.
The recurring “I’ll be your sunshine” vocal gives the track an immediate singalong quality, while bright synths and GRiZ’s familiar funk-driven instrumentation create the warmth listeners have long associated with his music. Then the bass arrives and reminds everyone that the same artist responsible for all that color can still absolutely melt a sound system.
That contrast has always been part of what makes GRiZ different. His music can feel wholesome, euphoric and ridiculously heavy within the same few minutes.
After four years in the vault, “Sunshine” feels less like another single and more like an old friend finally arriving home.
Westend & Twin Diplomacy – “Sensational”
Released August 21 via Trace Amounts
It wouldn’t feel like a complete Tempo Setter 7 without at least one house record capable of sending us directly into a dark room at 1:30 in the morning.
This month, that record is “Sensational.”
Westend joins Miami-bred duo Twin Diplomacy for a track that lives in the darker, tech-heavy side of contemporary house. Beatport categorizes the record as bass house, while its production carries plenty of the tech-house instincts Westend has built his name around: stripped percussion, club-focused low end and tension that develops gradually rather than giving everything away immediately.
The atmosphere is mischievous, dark and energetic.
Its drops begin with an extended bass sustain that almost seems to pull the floor out beneath the listener before shifting into a catchy dialing-style melody. That small melodic idea becomes the earworm, giving the song just enough personality to separate it from the endless supply of functional club records arriving every week.
“Sensational” does not need a huge cinematic payoff.
It simply finds its groove, locks you inside it and refuses to let go.
This was one of the most fun tracks in our rotation all month.
NGHTMRE & Jordin Sparks – “No Air”
Released August 21 via Gud Vibrations
Of all the nostalgia-driven moments on this month’s list, this might be the one we least expected.
Jordin Sparks’ “No Air” originally appeared on her 2007 self-titled debut before becoming one of the defining pop records of the following year. Nearly two decades later, NGHTMRE has rebuilt it as melodic drum & bass, with Sparks herself returning to re-record her vocals specifically for the new version. Chris Brown’s portion of the original duet is absent entirely.
And somehow, it works almost perfectly.
NGHTMRE preserves the unmistakable chorus and emotional lift of the original while replacing its late-2000s pop production with warm piano, shimmering electronic textures and an energetic DnB backbone.
The result absolutely oozes feel-good energy.
There is something surreal about hearing a song so closely tied to the Y2K pop era suddenly racing forward at drum & bass tempo, but Sparks’ voice provides the connective tissue. That chorus still feels enormous, regardless of what genre surrounds it.
NGHTMRE has spent years bouncing between bass music, hip-hop, melodic production and festival records, so perhaps it should not be surprising that he was the producer to successfully introduce “No Air” to an entirely different dancefloor.
What a treat to pull this one out of the late-2000s vault and give it another life.
Doctor P – “Shots”
Released August 27 via Circus Records
Where do we even start with Doctor P?
Shaun Brockhurst began professionally producing music back in 2007, initially working heavily in drum & bass before becoming one of the producers who helped define the more aggressive strain of dubstep emerging around the end of that decade. In 2009, he co-founded Circus Records alongside childhood friend Flux Pavilion and others, helping build one of the labels most closely associated with dubstep’s explosion into the mainstream.
Nearly twenty years into that production journey, Doctor P still sounds restless.
“Shots” carries pieces of the brostep vocabulary he helped popularize but arranges them within a modern dubstep framework. The result sounds familiar without becoming a throwback record.
And that is where Doctor P continues to excel.
His tracks rarely travel in a straight line. Just when you think you’ve figured out what a drop is doing, the arrangement makes another left turn. Bass sounds mutate, rhythms shift and ideas appear that would feel completely out of place in another producer’s hands.
Yet somehow Doctor P keeps the whole thing coherent.
More than fifteen years after “Sweet Shop” became one of the records that helped define an emerging generation of heavy electronic music, he is still evolving the same mischievous production personality rather than simply recreating it.
“Shots” is Doctor P reminding us that being one of dubstep’s pioneers does not mean becoming a museum piece.
HURTBOX – “NO LOVE LOST”
Released August 28
HURTBOX brings something considerably colder to this month’s list.
The French producer has steadily risen through the heavier side of dubstep over the last several years, developing alongside his brother HOL! after the two grew up immersed in bass music and challenged one another while learning production. HURTBOX has cited early influences including FuntCase, Cookie Monsta, Doctor P and Midnight Tyrannosaurus, while his more recent work has placed him alongside names such as SHIVERZ, Aweminus and AKIRAH.
Tracks like “REDLINE,” “KNOCKOUT” and “RUN DAT AGAIN” helped establish the identity, but “NO LOVE LOST” feels particularly concentrated.
There is a dense emotional quality buried inside all of the destruction.
HURTBOX’s distorted basslines feel industrial and abrasive, yet the sound engineering itself remains remarkably precise. Nothing feels accidentally messy. Every scrape, growl and mechanical texture occupies exactly the amount of space it needs.
That contrast is what makes his sound infectious.
“NO LOVE LOST” feels packed to the walls without collapsing underneath its own weight. The emotion is complex, the bass design is ugly in exactly the right ways, and the production remains sharp enough to make every impact register.
With the single now lending its name to HURTBOX’s upcoming NO LOVE LOST Tour, it also feels like another step in an artist quickly moving beyond emerging-name status.
Seven Lions & Kill The Noise – “I Need”
Released August 28 via Monstercat
Nearly a decade after “Cold Hearted,” Seven Lions and Kill The Noise have returned to the place where their collaborative story began.
Their first official collaboration arrived through Monstercat in 2017, combining Seven Lions’ melodic instincts with Kill The Noise’s heavier sound-design expertise. “I Need” marks their eighth collaboration, following additional work together across singles, super-collaborations and the years since that first release.
And the connection to “Cold Hearted” is not accidental.
Seven Lions said the pair entered the studio intending to create something that could function as a spiritual “Cold Hearted” successor: melodic, but heavy. Kill The Noise similarly described trying to rediscover the creative mindset he had when they made the 2017 original, only now with almost another decade of production experience behind them.
You can hear that division of strengths throughout “I Need.”
Seven Lions creates the soaring melodic environment, allowing the listener to float through the song’s more emotional passages. Kill The Noise then provides the teeth, pulling that world into heavier sections without destroying the atmosphere surrounding them.
It feels blissful and destructive at the same time.
There is also something rewarding about hearing two producers who have influenced multiple generations of melodic and heavy bass music revisit the chemistry they established years ago without simply recreating an old record.
“I Need” allows us to step into the world they have built together and fly through it once again.
This ended up as another one of our favorites of August.
Seven Tracks, Several Generations of Electronic Music
Looking back at August, one theme kept appearing whether we planned for it or not: history does not have to stay in the past.
Flux Pavilion transformed one of his defining early remixes using everything he has learned since 2010. GRiZ finally released an ID fans had been chasing since 2022. NGHTMRE pulled one of late-2000s pop’s biggest hooks into modern drum & bass. Seven Lions and Kill The Noise deliberately returned to a creative relationship that began almost a decade ago.
Meanwhile, Doctor P showed that one of dubstep’s original architects is still capable of making unpredictable bass music, HURTBOX represented the generation continuing to mutate those sounds, and Westend and Twin Diplomacy made sure we did not forget the dancefloor in the process.
That is exactly what we want Tempo Setter 7 to capture.
Not the seven biggest songs.
Not seven songs that sound alike.
Just seven releases that gave us a reason to hit play again.
What August release stayed in your rotation?
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