Los Angeles, CA · bass · electronic

Skrillex

2 upcoming festivals ↓

Bass music's shape-shifting elder — from brostep infamy to festival-set transcendence, reinvention as a permanent state.

Skrillex, born Sonny John Moore in 1988, grew up between Northeast Los Angeles and Northern California after being adopted as an infant by family friends of his biological parents. He attended a private arts academy in Los Angeles and was later homeschooled after being bullied, spending his teenage years drifting between punk shows in East and South LA and electro raves in Silver Lake and Echo Park.

He first became known as the vocalist of the post-hardcore band From First to Last, joining in 2004 and recording the albums Dear Diary, My Teen Angst Has a Bodycount and Heroine before leaving in 2007 to go solo. After a planned debut album, Bells, was shelved, he began performing as Skrillex and released the free EP My Name Is Skrillex in 2010 via MySpace.

His early EPs, including Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites and More Monsters and Sprites, helped define the aggressive, mid-tempo dubstep variant known as brostep. At the 2012 Grammy Awards he won Best Dance/Electronic Album, Best Dance Recording and Best Remixed Recording, and was nominated for Best New Artist; he was later named MTV's Electronic Dance Music Artist of the Year.

Since then his work has moved through trap, house and pop production, and he has collaborated widely, notably as half of Jack Ü with Diplo and Dog Blood with Boys Noize. His debut album Recess reached number four on the Billboard 200 in 2014, and he has produced or co-written for artists outside dance music, including mixing Incubus's album 8.

He returned in 2023 with the paired albums Quest for Fire and Don't Get Too Close, followed by a fourth album in 2025. Skrillex has won nine Grammy Awards, more than any other electronic dance music act. His live shows tend to draw on the full span of that catalogue rather than a single style.

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