We don't know about you, but this time of year makes us want to strap on a pair of sparkly gold stilettos, squeeze into something that's possibly too tight given how much we ate over Thanksgiving, and get our ho-ho-holiday on — on the dancefloor, of course. Thankfully, many of our favorite pop stars seem to feel the same way, obliging us with festive dance pop originals and clubby remakes of the classics, all decked out with killer beats and groovable hooks. To get you in the holiday spirit, we've assembled this little guide to the brightest lights on the holiday pop tree, from the Biebster's naughty, brand-spanking-new Under the Mistletoe to Destiny's Child's ode to Rudolph. It's Christmas — with a beat you can dance to. 'Tis the season to get your booty wiggling!Click here for a playlist:
Christmas on the Dance Floor
Justin BieberUnder the Mistletoe
The Biebster + the holidays? Why didn't someone think of this sooner?! The boy wonder knows how to get you in the festive mood. And we do mean mood: things get downright naughty on "Christmas Eve." The classics are craftily reworked (Santa comes to town with hip-hop swagger; the drummer boy goes clubbing), and the originals are finely tuned to show off Bieber's surprising range, from dubby coffee-shop pop to soulful country. Plus, a bunch of fabulous guests stop by, including Usher, Boyz II Men and, yes, Mariah Carey. Mistletoe is no Mimi holiday album. But it's one heck of a holiday party. [Rachel Devitt]
Dubstep really isn't made for albums. That's not to say that dubstep artists haven't made some fine long-players. But the music's cold-sweat intensity is best experienced in a long, rolling rush, from bass riff to bass riff. To facilitate that visceral immersion in the deep end, we've created a brand-new radio station, The Lowdown: Dubstep and Bass. Here you'll find every variation of low-end pressure, from 
A week ago, Amsterdam's rain-slicked streets filled up with DJs, industry types and hangers-on for the Amsterdam Dance Event, one of the club world's biggest confabs. There were panels and photo ops, champagne toasts and all-night ragers. It would have been the perfect opportunity for the city's Delsin imprint to crow in celebration of its 15th anniversary.
Deep house never really goes out of fashion; somewhere, there'll always be someone playing jazzy chords over a disco beat. For whatever reason, though, the style is particularly hot right now, with artists from Los Angeles to the Ukraine sinking their teeth into the slower tempos and moody melodies of dance music at its most romantic.
Paris' Ed Banger label has a certain reputation for, if not actual bad-boy behavior, then a certain louche, wanton excess -- from their overdriven club bangers to the frenzied response they elicit from their fans. From 
Erstwhile 
Months after its release, I still have trouble entirely wrapping my head around 
Simon Reynolds would probably have a field day with this month's roundup of new releases in electronic music. His new book, Retromania, examines the grip that the past has on the contemporary imagination, and most of my picks this month have a firm purchase on one bygone style or another. Portland's Soft Metals give New Wave its umpteenth iteration; Morning Factory and Two Armadillos both turn their hands to deeply classicist deep house. And Brooklyn's Laurel Halo makes lush, psychedelic electronica reminiscent of the '90s output of the Rephlex and R&S labels.
"Brostep" isn't a real genre -- it's a tongue-in-cheek term for dubstep's most aggressive wing, which has a propensity for serrated bass riffs and, sometimes, a reform-school sense of humor. Like chillwave, witch house and crabcore, it's a tag with which few artists wish to be identified. But that doesn't keep it from being a useful shorthand for dubstep at its gnarliest and tooth-gnashingest. (It just as well could have been called chainsaw 'n' bass, or perhaps testoster-tone.)
There's nothing like a major move to make you appreciate cloud-based music. As I wrote last week, my mom is selling her house, so I've been tasked with going through the approximately 3,000 records I have stored in her basement, and figuring out which to sell and which to ship back to Berlin, where they'll join another couple thousand pieces of vinyl already eating up all the available floor space. (My girlfriend has told me, in no uncertain terms, that we have space for exactly 1,600 more—that's the number of records that fits in Ikea's 4x4 "Expedit" model, the shelving of choice for DJs and hoarders the world over. So the culling is rather grueling.)
The 1995 film 
One aspect of summer that never fails to surprise is that the year is now nearly half over: we are closer to 2011's year-end critics-poll season than we are to 2010's. You've started drafting your own Top 10 list already, right? No? You haven't? Don't panic: here, Rhapsody's genre editors each pick their five favorite records of the year so far. How many will survive until November? Which ones will be replaced by Lil Wayne, by Beyoncé, by the soundtrack to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark? Time will tell, but for now, here are our picks for the year's best, half a year early. 
While there probably weren't too many high school seniors that made it past the velvet ropes, in 1978, Studio 54 shone like a beacon to kids dreaming of bright lights in the big city. Just a few years before, disco had been a resolutely underground thing, but by 1978 and 
It's finally here. After months of careful leaks, garish videos and audacious stunts (the Grammy egg!), 
Chicago house never really goes out of fashion. Invented in the mid-'80s, it was a catalyst for both British rave culture and 
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