De Hofnar has been on a mission to dominate the deep house scene, and it looks like it’s working out for him. Unstoppable this past year with countless releases, the Dutchman teams up with Soave veteran MKJ known for his ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ cover nearing 90 million streams. Berlin-based YOTO joins forces to bring his experienced sound in the works, and to top things off his AVY X with an infectious vocal you’ll be singing all day. ‘Echo’ has those club and festival vibes aimed to make us dance, but the collective musical maturity they bring to the table makes this a record accessible in so many ways. Not one to miss, check out the new King’s Castle x Soave tune right here, right now!
As one of the founders of the Tropical House genre, De Hofnar made his first millions of streams on SoundCloud and YouTube. His talent was quickly spotted by the fathers of dance music with Tiësto, Laidback Luke, Pete Tong, and Armin van Buuren asking the Dutchman to make official remixes for them. “It’s just amazing when legends like these ask you to make remixes of their tracks.” De Hofnar, meaning ‘Court Jester’ in Dutch, sees himself mainly as a provider of joy for people. “I believe that as a DJ, I’m the court jester for people all over the world. That’s why I live my slogan: You’re the kings and queens and I’m just here to entertain you.” His debut album, called ‘Kings and Queens’, went on to reach over 30 million streams on Spotify alone. 2021 saw De Hofnar launch his own record label Sandcastle, together with Dutch imprint Soave.
MKJ is a dreamer. He had to be in order to survive. At the tender age of six years old, he found himself living in a tent as a war refugee with his family. The young Kurdish boy dreamed that he would one day move far away, to the world he saw in Hollywood movies and TV shows. Surrounded by war and turmoil, the dream seemed impossible, but after years of practice and producing beats on his computer, he relocated to the United States at the age of 22 and began pursuing his music career in earnest. In 2017, an unofficially released track by the DJ/producer called Time made its way from MKJ’s SoundCloud page to the greater China region, where it became a meme and viral sensation. With its signature saxophone dance break, the song has spawned around 4 million TikTok videos, over 500 million streams, 210,000 NetEase comments and held the #1 on Shazam China charts for three weeks. All this led to worldwide touring opportunities and an exclusive distribution agreement with the China music tech giant, NetEase Cloud. A new vocal version of the track from the eclectic artist’s follow-up EP Time After Time topped at #2 on NetEase’s viral chart, while follow up singles brought him into the top 100 of most-streamed western artists on NetEase Cloud. From 2020 on, MKJ is signed with Soave Records with ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ as his biggest hit so far.
YOTO is a Berlin-based producer and songwriter with an extensive background of working for other artists, most recently credited as co-writer on songs such as ‘Far From Home’ by Timmy Trumpet or ‘So Done’ with Blinded Hearts. His own sound resists clear labeling into just one category, as it weaves his capacity for writing radio-ready hits together with his past as the guitarist in an indie band. These different backgrounds inform the stylistically varied sound of his releases, which can draw inspiration from 80s synth-pop as well as deep house.
