Artist profile
About
Jamie xx is the stage name of English musician Jamie Smith, a DJ, producer and remixer whose work connects the intimacy of indie songwriting with the physical pull of dance music. Smith began with drums and then discovered the possibilities of the Akai MPC, a shift that gave him a way to build beats, manipulate samples and perform electronic parts live. In 2006 he formed The xx with school friends Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim, helping define the group’s spare, emotionally charged sound through beats, production and arrangement. The band’s self-titled 2009 debut won the Mercury Prize and established Smith as a distinctive studio voice, but his solo work has always followed a wider route through house, rave, soul, hip-hop and UK club history. His Jamie xx identity first became widely visible through reworks and remixes, including the atmospheric version of Florence + The Machine’s You’ve Got The Love and the collaborative album We’re New Here, which reimagined Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here with producer Richard Russell. He also contributed production and remixes for artists including Drake, Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Adele and Radiohead, bringing the same attention to space, rhythm and vocal texture into very different musical settings. The first solo single Far Nearer / Beat For appeared in 2011, followed by a run of tracks that made his dance-floor language increasingly clear. All Under One Roof Raving, Girl, Sleep Sound, Loud Places and Gosh each place different rhythmic ideas inside a carefully shaped emotional arc, allowing melody and percussion to carry equal weight. In Colour, his 2015 solo album, expanded that method into a full-length work that moves between gospel warmth, clipped techno, breakbeat pressure, disco references and bright, almost euphoric house. The album’s sequencing feels closer to a long DJ set than a collection of unrelated singles, with carefully chosen changes in pace and colour creating a sense of continuous motion. Later releases such as Idontknow, Kill Dem and Let’s Do It Again brought a harder and more immediate edge, while Baddy On The Floor with Honey Dijon and the 2024 album In Waves showed that Smith could keep evolving without abandoning his instinct for contrast. In Waves balances energetic club tracks with reflective passages, layered samples and collaborative vocals, and its deluxe editions continue to expand that world. Behind the decks, Jamie xx is known for sets that move between generations of British dance music and a broad international record culture. He can place a rough drum pattern beside a shimmering vocal, a soulful sample or a piece of left-field electronics, then let the transition do the storytelling. The approach is precise but never sterile: small shifts in rhythm, tone and repetition create momentum while leaving room for surprise. His influence comes from treating the dance floor as a place for both release and close listening, an attitude that links his work with The xx to his solo catalogue and production collaborations. Jamie xx’s career therefore sits at a productive intersection: a band member who reshaped indie pop, a producer who works across scenes, and a DJ whose selections turn history into a living, moving form.