Once upon a time, two Brooklyn-based DJs named Lauren both loved the color black. They teamed up with the xx’s Romy Madley Croft (is there a more British sounding name in music today?) to create “Days,” a gothic swamp of sultry vocals and measured beats, which the Young Turks label released in January 2011 as a vinyl 12. CREEP’s release also included the remix of “Days” courtesy of Toronto’s Azari & III. Although it may take a flow chart to follow the phylogeny of their remix of “Days,” the song stands on its own even if the listener chooses to ignore its complex back story.

Madley-Croft sings, “My nights are turning into days, but I don’t notice anything’s changed,” but as it turns out, Azari & III did have a few changes in mind. They sped up the tempo, and added a distinct, pulsing rhythm to the backbeat. These alterations catapult the sultry seduction of “Days” from a private tête à tête to an all-out dance floor fête. The remix is more incessant than the original at every turn, so even when the song’s tempo does slow at the break, it is only long enough to catch ones breath before the extended instrumental section that brings this version of “Days” to a close.

Remixes of “Days” are popping up everywhere, including on Denver-based electronica whiz (and former OTM featured artist) Pictureplane’s Negative Slave mixtape, so CREEP fans without a turntable can still get a different “Days” for practically any day of the week.

When your band hasn’t even released a debut full-length but NME is fawning over you and The New York Times is throwing around words like “the next big thing,” chances are you’re doing something right. If Brooklyn duo French Horn Rebellion wanted any more buzz, they’d have to take a sledgehammer to a beehive, but rest assured the attention is warranted.

For starters, try on this Kap10Kurt reworking of the title track from their recently released This Moment EP. K10K renders the original in a more subdued light, trading in French Horn Rebellion’s original tight-jointed funkiness for a deep tissue synthesizer massage. Thick handclaps hammer out the 2s and 4s while the main melodies are swaddled in sleek new digital wrapping; there is even a geeky faux slap bass line toward the end to fully tilt the guilty pleasure meter.

Fans of previous OTM spotlighted artists like Kisses, MGMT, and Holy Ghost! will have a blast with “This Moment,” as will supporters of Hot Chip, Sleigh Bells, and Cut Copy–all of whom the band has shared stages with.

This remix of the title track of French house musician Kavinsky’s recent Nightcall EP sounds like a cross between the Hi-NRG dance pop that the production team of Stock Aitken Waterman cooked up in the late 1980s and the theme from The X-Files.

In its original configuration, “Nightcall” is a mid-tempo synth-pop number somewhere in the neighborhood of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” The lead vocal is handled by Lovefoxxx from CSS, who trades vocals with a heavily vocoderized Kavinsky throughout the song. It plays like a seduction scene between a sweet and naïve girl and a seedy sort who may be up to no good.

Remix artist Robotaki amps up the beats and layers the song in synth effects, recalling Stock Aitken Waterman-helmed hits for the likes of Dead or Alive or Bananarama. He also removes Kavinsky’s processed voice entirely from the proceedings, turning the song into a one-sided conversation between Lovefoxxx and a whistling synth line. Without the male vocal counterpoint, Lovefoxxx’s vocal takes on a more wistful tone, and when the song breaks into a ‘70s style synthesizer solo at the midpoint the whole thing becomes an exercise in disco euphoria.

Remixes sometimes can feel like pointless exercises to pump up a single to EP length, but that’s not the case with “Nightcall.” Robotaki takes a strong original song and transforms it into its completely different, but equally strong, Hi-NRG looking glass reflection.

Brooklyn foursome Restless People may be a relatively new act on listeners’ radars–their eponymous debut LP won’t be released until September 14th by IAMSOUND–but their sound will be familiar to those who have kept up with recent releases by Caribou, Deastro, and Delorean. Restless People‘s eight songs borrow a hard edge from 1990s house music as well as a heaping helping of the pan-global, post-everything mélange of the aforementioned groups, an auditory approach that nods in many directions while performing the sleight of hand of not sounding too much like any of its inspirations.

The forthcoming record kicks off with “Days of Our Lives,” a thunderous, drum machine driven single whose percussive elements are as piercing as the synthesized air horn which occasionally makes its presence known. Repetition is the central theme at play throughout the song: all of its lyrics are refrains, vocal samples stutter out with insistence, keyboards thump out patterened melodies, and an angry faux snare hammers out in a frantic Morse code. Restless People’s music is an unapologetic bash–as in both the noun and the verb–and this will assuredly make it unpalatable for some listeners. However, for those willing to engage in the noisy delirium there is an intense energy to be enjoyed throughout “Days of Our Lives,” a song which may prove to be a template for a lot of the music we’ll be hearing over the next few years.