.jpg)
1 hour ago
3
Surprise, it's a new Skrillex album.
6/5/2026
Skrillex Noah Dillon
Skrillex dropped a heavy hint a new album was imminent when he posted the tracklist to a project named Soma earlier this week.
It was thus then only sort of a surprise when the album came out today (June 5), marking the fifth studio album in the producer’s catalog. (Although to be fair, his last “album” was a 46-minute mix made from 36 tracks.) Today, Skrill even sent a link to Soma out to his own email list under his real name, Sonny, with a note saying, “feel free to share this with others since not everyone gets these emails. i’m going to look into this as well. <3” The move tracks with anyone who’s ever met him relaying that he’s a sweetheart and a real one — and, of course, one of the most important electronic artists of a generation.
Busting the doors down in 2010 with his American take on dubstep, he defined the sound of the U.S. electronic music explosion with music that felt like riding a rollercoaster through the apocalypse. Grammys piled up, side projects abounded and through it all, he never dropped anything that felt pandering as he also evolved.
Which brings us to Soma, an experimental album populated with new and regular collaborators including ISOxo, MC Dricka, Anita B Queen, Taichu, Chris Lake, Feid, Naisha, Blawan and quite a few others This crew brings a lot of their own unique flavors — the bounce on “É o Bonde” is classic Lake, Feid’s reggaeton is laced through “Noche Without You” and MC Dricka, Taichu and RHR all bring the sounds and vibe of their native Argentina and Brazil — making it altogether feel like Skrill is laying foundation for his friends to contribute to an album that altogether sounds extremely worldly and of the moment.
But it’s also entirely Skrillex’s own, with the scale, intensity and sharpness of the tracks functioning as the latest evolution of his historically heavy sound and the lighter, more emotive moments evoking the cerebral, ambient terrain he’s also recently been working in.
Here’s our ranking of Soma‘s 13 tracks.
-
Skrillex & Naisha, “Cheeni”
Two of Soma‘s lightest and most experimental moments happen with frequent collaborator Naisha, whose bits of vocals here sound like they’re being beamed in from heaven. As such, the track’s wind chimes and glowing synths work well in tandem.
-
Skrillex, Naisha & BEAM, “Diwali”
Soma ends with the playful “Diwali” which includes actual laughter and vocals from Naisha and Jamaican-born American rapper BEAM, who was also on “Hydrate” from Skrill’s 2023 Quest For Fire. While sort of silly in its “weeka weeka weeeee!” moments, the track also gets real hard real quick, vibrating with bass and BEAM’s Jamaican swagger.
-
Skrillex & rom, “Scut 2”
Coming at the midway point of the album, you can think of “Scut 2” as a palette cleanser, with the experimental track made from loads of chopped percussion and three voices: one frequently commanding “sit!,” another one saying “okayyy!” and a third who at the song’s end mysteriously declares “read only memory.”
-
Skrillex & Young Miko, “Duro”
A collab with Young Miko released in March, “Duro” whips hyperpop and Latin influences into a thrillride as celestial as it is heavy.
-
Skrillex & ISOxo, “Anybody”
Soma includes a pair of collaborations with San Diego wunderkind ISOxo, and this one moves at lightspeed, leaning into gabber and hardcore and whipping up the sense of frenzy commonly associated with those genres. It’s not necessarily the variety of hard music we’ve come to know from Skrillex, but certainly these genres have shared DNA with his own output. Plus, it makes sense to hear from him, as he seems to have been recently been spending a lot of time in Europe, where they hail from.
-
Skrillex, Chris Lake & Anita B Queen, “La Noche 2”
A followup to this trio’s 2025 release “La Noche,” this part 2 version uses Anita B Queen’s original vocals but otherwise disassociates them from part one’s raunchy production. Instead, here we get something much more experimental, with the intermittent synths glowing like a soundtrack for how humans of previous eras imagined the digital utopia of the future might be. Coming ahead of Soma‘s final three tracks, it’s also a moment to catch one’s breath in this otherwise fast and pummeling project.
-
Skrillex, Dismantle, DJ 2K DO TAQUARIL & MC Dricka, “Pente Rala”
It’s a cliche to say a song rewires your neural pathways, but damn if there isn’t something functioning on another level in the buzzy, swarm of bees bass that dominates this collaboration with UK bass producer Dismantle, Brazil’s MC Dricka and DJ 2K DO TAQUARIL. Combining a sinewy little guitar lick, hand percussion, loads of other drums and boisterous vocals with an infinite number of little production flourishes, this one demands a pair of good headphones to really hear it right.
-
Skrillex, Randomer, Blawan & MC Dricka, “Thistle”
Brazil’s MC Dricka has the kind of vocal tone that cuts through production like a knife, making her swaggy delivery the centerpiece of a cerebral production from Skrill, Randomer and Blawan. The track quickly grows in size from its hand percussion intro to the addition of synths playing like a morse code signal, with “Thistle” ultimately oscillating back and forth between ambient and segments of more complicated and cacophonous percussion, to excellent effect.
-
Skrillex & Nitepunk, “Soma”
A collaboration with Nitepunk, the album’s opener first surfaced on the internet about a year ago under the name “Poosha/Crisis Theme” after Skrill debuted it during his set at Ultra Miami 2025. The album version is essentially the same song Skrillex fans have been talking about for the last 14 months — including its internet famous “PAPI BOOMBA!” sample — with its rising wave of bass flecked with drums and nervous-system-shaking drop functioning as a tone setter for the 12 tracks that follow.
-
Skrillex & Feid, “Noche Without You”
In the “I did not see this one coming” department, Skrillex links with Colombian star Feid and the late, great Italian producer Robert Miles for “Noche Without You” which heavily samples Miles’ 1995 trance essential “Children.” The emotional heft of the original does a lot of heavy lifting here, with the track gliding along on “Children'”s iconic piano chords, which Skrillex wraps with his own pitchy synths and reggaeton as Feid delivers lyrics about the sadness of suddenly sleeping on your own. Love and the lack of it are rare overt themes in the Skrillex catalog, making this one even more of a standout.
-
Skrillex, Chris Lake & RHR, “É o Bonde”
Skrillex’s music frequently hits, but rarely does it groove. So the bassline in “É o Bonde” (a title translating to “it’s the crew” in Brazilian slang) is a treat, bouncing along with enough crisp percussion, glitchy flourishes and deft production design (the build between 3:10 and 3:27 is something to behold) to also make it an obvious Skrillex production. A collab with two frequent collaborators, Brazilian producer RHR and English titan Chris Lake (a Skrill associate since the two worked together on OWSLA’s first HOWSLA house compilation back in 2017), the track is swaggering, fun and evolutionary to the overall oeuvre.
-
Skrillex, ISOxo, Cristale & TeeZandos, “Smoke”
Released May 1, “Smoke” is arguably the best example of how Skrillex has evolved the early 2010s dubstep he broke out with into a sound that maintains the command of size and spirit of aggression without ever leaning into a nostalgia or old tricks. A collaboration with ISOxo, rapper Cristale and London drill artist TeeZandos, “Smoke” is threatening, crunchy and hectic, speeding along on a dizzying BPM and amalgamating punches of Skrillex’s characteristically sharp percussion into a sound that’s akin to getting hit with a nail gun, in a good way. And surely this one goes crazy live.
-
Skrillex, Tracey, Taichu & Anita B Queen, “Tranki”
A tag-team collab from Skrillex, rapper Tracey, Argentinian singer/rapper Taichu and Anita B Queen, an Argentine artist of South Korean descent (who also appears on Soma‘s “La Noche 2” and was the heart of its 2025 predecessor “La Noche”), “Tranki” finds Skrill throwing the kitchen sink at it, tetris-ing together trap, UKG, galloping beats, waves of rolling bass, hand claps, vocals in English and Portuguese and loads of other bits and bobs into a intricate but ultimately quite slinky track that, more than anything, drips with attitude.
English (US)