In May of 2025, Marlon Hoffstadt, AKA DJ Daddy Trance, played in the US for the first time—on the mainstage at Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, for 70,000 people, right between Tiësto and Amand Van Buuren. That same week, he signed a deal with Capitol Records, who released Supersonic / Hands Up In The Sky, his first singles on an American label. Before heading back to Berlin, he headlined a sold-out show at Knockdown Center in Brooklyn, his first gig in New York City.

This was just the latest chapter in Hoffstadt’s global victory lap. Playing clubs in his home city of Berlin from the age of 15, the perpetually smiling, neon-haired DJ has been on fire since 2020, when he reinvented himself as DJ Daddy Trance and started breaking all the rules of the scene that raised him. Marlon’s productions bring the shameless fun of pop into storming club music, whether in edits (like his breakthrough version of Kid Cudi’s “Day n’ Night”) or in original productions like “It’s That Time.” More than the singalongs they inevitably inspire, tracks like this influenced a young generation of producers and pointed toward a new direction for European dance at large. The DJ sets, of course, are just as electrifying, an explosive burst of pure energy every time. Marlon’s dance floors always lose their shit—fists pumping, sweat flying, everyone savoring every last moment of an emotional release they simply don’t get anywhere else.

“Feel everything,” Hoffstadt says. “Complete joy, completely letting go, raise your hands and sing along. Don’t be too cool, just play whatever you want.”

“There is no guilty pleasure,” he says. “Only pleasure.”

It turns out this was just what we all needed: an anti-purist dance floor hero, too poppy for the underground, too ravey for the mainstream, never really fitting in, and never really caring. Dead serious about what he does but never taking himself too seriously. A man dedicated to the simple mission of making you feel more than you’ve ever ...