Melee Beats

"Sunday Single" is taking a spin on the dance floor this week. Check out the thumping nouveau-disco on "Coming Out Tonight" by the electronic musician known as Melee Beats. The song's an advance track from his album "Explore the Heart," which is set for release June 10.

Melee Beats has a deft touch with production and has crafted some booty-shaking tracks – oh, and he also sings on most of his tunes. Log on to www.sacbee.com/sundaysingle to hear "Coming Out Tonight." - Sacramento Bee

Melee Beats - Distraction. I'm very fond of the way this track implies a depth of field within its range of sounds. Listening to the song is like watching a 3D movie -- keyboard parts recede drastically behind the beat, and overlap with these cosmic Kraftwerk parts that pop so much that they seem surreal and slightly disconnected from the thumping bass line. The singer seems somewhat passive to the sound, as though he's just sort of passing through these amazing electronic textures in a simulated physical space, just like the listener. - Fluxblog.net

Demerit points for the so-lovingly-rendered-it's-almost-plagiaristic homage to the deep thuds and carnivalesque whirlygigging of Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", but if you can get past that, "Distraction" is actually a pretty wonderful slice of disco house. As the cringingly-named Melee Beats, fledgling Sacramento-based producer Nic Bertino makes French house from his American bedroom. There's good reason that sounds like a bad idea, but the 20-year-old Bertino's (junior) boyish vocals and considerable maximalist production chops say otherwise. "Distraction"'s chockers with sweep filters, slap funk basslines, and wheezy vocodered vocals, so it's obvious that Bertino's Daft Punk man-love runs far deeper than the obvious "Harder, Better" connects, but, know what? There are worse bands to sound a lot like, especially at only 20. - Pitchfork Media