Artist You Should Know: HNNY

Todd Terje is the reigning Scandinavian underground dance music king,

HNNY is the prince in waiting.

Few artists in the past couple of years have been killing it as consistently and as frequently as HNNY (pronounced “honey”).

The Swedish producer, known to his parents as Johan Cederberg, burst onto my radar in 2012 with his bouncy (and fittingly titled) single, “For The Very First Time”.

With nearly 20 singles, and twice that number of edits and remixes under his belt, HNNY has never ceased to bring something interesting to the table with every release and has been a staple of my playlists since I’ve been a DJ at KCRW.

HNNY’s work could generally be classified as house or disco (with a few outliers throughout his catalog), but it’s a sunny playfulness that’s the true hallmark of his sound up to this point.

Already this year, he’s put out a handful of remixes, a couple of EPs, an entire album of edits (called, simply HNNY Edits — released on the equally always on point Local Talk imprint), and has his debut album, Sunday, set to drop any day now.

If the album’s breezy first single “Cheer Up, My Brother” (and the other previously released song, “There Is No One Else“) is any indication, chilled out AM gold vibes should be expected on Sunday.

It’s a Terje-esque twist on the debut album defying expectations and it’ll be another interesting step in the continued evolution of HNNY.