Minneapolis-St. Paul's Best Electronic Dance Music Clubs, DJs, Parties and Crews

This swank little sit-down club may seem like a counterintuitive place to experience DJ culture. Its booking policy emphasizes jazz and modern composition; one memorable Monday night offering was a local ensemble performing Terry Riley's minimalist classic "In C."

But Berlin has an admirably wide-open late-night booking policy, bringing in local DJs like Allen Hz, Amy Pickett (spinning a back-to-back set) and the crafty Minneapolis techno musician Lonefront (who curated a series of weekends there). All of them played music suited for sitting, but still within the realm of what they'd do for a dance floor.

It's a great way to pregame.

No longer the dance floor-driven powerhouse it was for many years, this venerable downtown legend still puts on fun, pop-culture theme-driven “raves” (e.g., parties based on pop cultural figures like “Shrek” and “Barbie”) as well as booking the occasional house/techno star, such as Chicagoan Ron Trent and Detroit’s Kyle Hall. 

The 7th Street Entry hosted both — its small black-box feel works amazingly well for dancing, even if the layout isn’t maximized for it — but First Avenue’s main room still has the best dance floor in the city, still intact from the club’s 1930s incarnation as a bus station.

This comfortably laid-out space has a sizable back area, an upstairs lounge, and an outdoor deck that lets you break away from the music. That music tends toward rock, but it also has an adventurous and community-spirited policy toward dance music, working with a wealth of promoters to put on everything from a Halloween booking of UK dubstep-turned-house star Skream to a Sunday all-ages house night to the self-explanatory Club K-Pop.

Since the pandemic subsided, the bar half of this West Bank Ethiopian eatery has become a staple for the local dance scene, hosting weekend events from a healthy array of local promoters. At the Red Sea, you’ll find everything from psytrance parties by Transcending Events to the boisterous house of Ecstatic Music, spearheaded by Minneapolis house stalwart Michelle Muse, to regular events from Enigma, whose lineups lean toward the experimental edges of techno and house. And if you arrive early and hungry, your solution is right there.

A loose-knit group of DJs in Minneapolis, Crimes Against Ravers are notorious for noisy, hyper-fast DJ sets and mad energy among their crowds. Starting out post-pandemic doing house shows, the crew instantly drew large numbers, and when they took things to the rehabbed dive Mortimer’s, they found their ideal venue. 

C.A.R.’s blithering soundtrack isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s bracing and a force.

This consortium has become highly active over the past few years, throwing parties at hotels and breweries and the occasional big-name club gig. They cater to a boisterous crowd — people ready to party, less than head-nodding or trainspotting — acting as a bridge between the mainstream EDM and the club world. 

"Your gateway to Deep, Progressive, House, and Techno,” goes their tag line. They pack them in for good reason: Dance Agenda’s production is professional, its operations are smooth, and its vibe is welcoming. No wonder why their Instagram following is 10,000 strong.

Though other promoters may throw larger parties, none has been at it as avidly for as long as Intellephunk, which is run by DJs Steven Centrific, Christian James and Dustin Zahn (a Minneapolitan now in Berlin who plays a key role in specific events), as well as Jasmine Seuling. 

Their key event has long been Communion, a spring-summer Sunday party that often brings in national and international headliners but is just as noteworthy when it’s all local talent. It’s still a stronghold for purist techno and house — the more funky and creative, the better — but it’s become much more open, genre-wise, with its annual bass-music showcase a guaranteed sellout. 

Since July of 2020, The Great Beyond (Instagram) has been a major part of the techno event calendar, and not just among Minnesotans; it garnered a rave review in 2024 from Resident Advisor, a major dance-music chronicler. And throughout the fall and winter, Intellephunk puts on events in other venues — some listed, some not — that its loyal audience prepares for well in advance. 

This Minneapolis collective, which initially cohered in Duluth, operates on all cylinders — but selectively. As a label, Kajunga puts out adventurous house and techno from local and regional performers; as a promoter, it puts on good parties in dark rooms where the music goes places. 

Its sharp visual sense has put the brand’s logo on a healthy percentage of local dance floors. And its Kajunga Program podcast, now in its ninth year — or, as their titling convention goes, its ninth season — remains a go-to for anyone wishing to sample the local scene’s many good DJs, including regulars Cloudy Kid (SE.9 EP.6), Ryote (SE.9 EP.3), Private Guy (SE.8, EP.10), Lanny (SE.8 EP.5), and Berndt (SE.8, EP.2). 

A graphic designer who's become a regular at Modist Brewing and a frequent guest at a wide array of regular local events, from Communion to House Proud to the Minnesota Zoo, Alexis Rose’s DJ sets burst with soulful feeling. A house spinner who leans toward warm-toned, instrumentally rich tracks — rooted in R&B and disco, with an ineffable sense of sweetness about them — Rose has become an expert at working a crowd to its collective peak.

Over the past half-decade, D. Untethered has become a crucial player in the Twin Cities dance underground on several fronts. Their sound system, The People’s Sound, is one of the most remarkably clear systems in operation in a city where good sound is legion. Along with The Headspace Collective, Pivot, and Wizard Haus, they’ve spearheaded the recent annual tradition of sound systems at Mayday in Powderhorn Park. 

Along with Alexis Rose (see above) and SCI-FI, D. co-promotes the stellar Saturday monthly DecaDance at the Uptown VFW. The party gets fully into gear when D. steps into the booth, armed with a lollipop single-ear headpiece for mixing and a finely honed collection of soulful, and sometimes politically charged, grooves.

For over a decade, the affable and big-eared Michael Grey, a Minneapolitan who’d come into the music scene playing in bands, has hosted the monthly party The Assortment. It spins a freewheeling mix of pop, indie, R&B, and hip-hop meant to evoke a 2000s-era iPod on shuffle mode, primarily for adherents of the new wave-oriented events hosted by Jake Ruhd (of the long-running Current show and First Avenue phenomenon Transmission). 

As the event settled into its longstanding residence at Mortimer’s, Grey also began introducing more house music into his sets. Over the past couple of years, he’s been playing more of it, oftentimes alongside fellow Mort’s regular Jen-E — another DJ with good ears, both ready to roll up their sleeves and explore.

Taking place on the outdoor patio of Eat Street Crossing — or behind its glass doors, depending on the weather — DayFunk, which starts in the afternoon and finishes in the early evening, is a refreshing monthly house party that’s also family-friendly. 

Promoter Nick Gunz regularly calls in U.S. house-music favorites to headline, such as DJ Dan and Collette, both from L.A. Just as importantly, the Minnesotans who play the party range from grizzly 90s veterans to DJs who’ve been playing around town for less than a year. 

The vibe is always positive, and the frequent presence of kids adds an extra layer of friendliness to things. (DayFunk has also held an annual weekend-long “summer camp for adults” in recent years.) If you get tired, you can grab some food from one of the vendors and sit past the entrance on the left.

Originally from Duluth — she still plays there regularly — the Minneapolis DJ Nola is a first-rate vinyl technician with mile-deep disco and funk crates that she makes beat-matching sound easy with (it isn’t). 

Her long-running Freak of the Week party originally concentrated on those styles, but over time she and her co-promoter/husband Evian Rave have expanded the event’s remit, bringing in more out-of-towners and offering freewheeling dispatches from throughout dance music’s history and palette. 

That sense of discovery has led to everything from a “70s vs. 80s” back-to-back DJ battle to a series of killer appearances from underground legends like Detroit’s DJ Cent and T-1000.

Originally from Portland, Oregon, DJ and promoter DJ Q has always stressed a queer-forward but inclusive framework for their perfectly named dark dance night, which more recently has added a perfect tag: “Mpls Goth Gays and Theys Nightlife.” 

Gothess has always been a fun place to stomp one’s boots, but it’s also played a crucial role in fostering new local DJ talent. DJ Q has been a hands-on mentor and teacher of up-and-coming spinners, and the result has been a bounty to the scene as a whole: BYZARRA, Dana Kazuko, and Dazzle are among the DJs who learned from DJ Q and still play regularly at Gothess, as well as other ventures around town.

Every first Saturday of the month, the queer sports bar Black Hart of St. Paul hosts a monthly that emphasizes disco and house but does not by any means end with them. The dance floor of Black Hart, inlaid a bit from the main bar area, has a cozy vibe even when it isn’t filled up, and the DJs playing Jumpsuit!, which is promoted by JayCee Lives, often reach for stuff they don’t get to play in bigger rooms as a result. 

Sometimes that means deep-crate pre-disco — a specialty of the party’s knowledgeable young resident, Real Girl — and sometimes it means Madonna. Always, it means fun. And if you get bored, there’s karaoke one (tiny) room away.

The last Friday of the month is reserved for drum & bass. For over a decade, Mechanix has served up local, national and international scene stalwarts in the Mattson Ballroom of Eagles 34, a cozy VFW hall whose bar comes stocked with regulars. (Sometimes there is square dancing in the venue’s other main hall, which can lead to quite a contrast.) 

The Mechanix crew has been making names for themselves in the wider drum & bass world. Co-promoters Jen Symmetry and Nick Merchant have become touring regulars; the former is a consistent presence on the U.S. bass-music festival circuit. 

It speaks to the party’s wide perspective on what can sometimes seem like a narrow music: you might hear any kind of D&B variant at a typical Mechanix, from liquid (whose basslines are as dreamily wavy as the name implies) to techstep (as grunting as that name implies). Very few sets are similar, even on the same program. All of it comes crystal clear on the Void sound system.

Find out more about Minneapolis-St. Paul's stellar music scene.