Jackie Hollander was looking for a sign. It was 2024 and she was working a grip of gigs — hostessing at restaurant, babysitting, working for her parents’ business, doing cyber security — to make ends meet while she produced music and pursued her dream of being an artist.
“At one point I thought I was going to get my real estate license,” says Hollander. “It was like, a mess, honestly.”
Having already signed with a manager and agent, her team suggested she go to London for a month to do studio sessions. It was a happy, productive time that she spent making music squarely in the tech house wheelhouse she’d been focused on. By month’s end, she was having a hard time wrapping her head around the idea of returning to her day jobs.
“It was the last week of my trip, and I’m really spiritual and believe in signs,” she says. “I asked the universe like, ‘Please don’t make me go back to this mix of jobs. Give me a sign that I’m meant to do this.” Hours later, Hollander got a call from her agent, who told her she’d been booked to play EDC Las Vegas. And Outside Lands.
“I literally called my parents, and was like, ‘I’m quitting! I’m just going do music full time and really go in!’ That was a huge moment of like, ‘I’m meant to do this.’”
And so Hollander has, growing her profile and catalog with releases across influential labels including Nervous Records, Chris Lake’s Black Book Records, Gorgon City’s Realm and beyond. Her most recent singles include the Experts Only release “High on You” and a thumping remix of Jayda G’s “All Day,” both released this month. Now based in L.A., where she speaks to Billboard over Zoom with her cat intermittently walking into frame, Hollander will soon take off on a run of major summer festivals.
Her life as a DJ started long before she was old enough to get into a club, with Hollander getting her first taste of the craft during summer camp in the mountains near Lake Tahoe. Attending as kids, she and her sister each selected DJing as an elective, then played the camp dance. While she was growing up in the Bay Area, Hollander’s parents “would always love to host the parties instead of us going to parties,” a setup that allowed her to DJ in the garage of the family home during such soirees. At the same time, she was getting into the famously vibrant Bay Area dance world.
This interest continued when Hollander moved to Los Angeles to attend college at USC. Her campus housing was close to The Shrine Auditorium, a key L.A. dance venue that’s also on the USC campus. “We’d go to every weekend,” Hollander recalls, citing an October 2019 set from LP Giobbi as one that sticks out in her memory. “It was incredible,” says Hollander. “I was like, “Who is this girl?’ We were Shazamming every song.”
The party stopped during Hollander’s junior year, when the pandemic forced classes online and she was back living with her parents during lockdown. To pass time, she bought DJ gear and retaught herself the skills she’d learned as a kid at camp, livestreaming her sets for practice. As such, she was fit to play when the world reopened and she returned to campus. Her break came when the DJ who was supposed to play a party hosted by the frat her then-boyfriend was in got sick. “So last minute they were like, ‘You’re going to do our party tonight,’” she recalls.
She still hadn’t quite mastered the use of CDJs, so she was watching tutorials on her phone, getting tips from the other DJ and effectively learning on the fly “with all the boys watching me in the atrium.” Despite the pressure, something clicked. “I felt free and at peace during that set. It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is my calling.’”
Why Jackie Hollander Is an Up-and-Coming Dance Artist
Playing shows on campus got her noticed by the team at L.A. nightclub Sound, where she first played as a college senior, then furthering this education by enrolling in a production bootcamp put on by the artist Justin Jay, who became a mentor. She also knew the then-rising producer It’s Murph, who was a year behind her at USC and taught her production while she taught him DJing. She was skilled at both by the time she graduated, at which point she mostly gave up music, moving to San Francisco to work in cybersecurity.
“I remember feeling so confused and not at peace with my job, but just having to do it every day,” she says. At night, she immersed herself in online tutorials about how to make electronic music, putting in the hours honing her craft and eventually sending tracks to labels for consideration.
“I was researching all the labels and emails and sending demos that people probably shouldn’t have been hearing,” she says with a laugh. “I was like, ‘I’m just going to send this out and see what happens.” By the end of 2023, nine of her tracks had been signed to various imprints. She found her now-manager Simon Bensoussan, who works at the London-based Palm Artists which also reps artists including Gorgon City and SG Lewis, through the team at Realm and soon also signed with UTA’s Perry Gilman. Not long after, she was playing the EDC and Outside Lands gigs that had come after her request for a sign.
As she continues growing, she’s now focused on consistently releasing music, which she says “really helped me grow, and I think very fast as well.” She advises young artists that releases don’t need to be perfect, as “even looking back at my catalog, I don’t love every song, but the consistently helped and you never know who it’s going to connect with it.” She also shot a lot of shots, sending tracks to A&R reps “nonstop. I probably sent 40 demos to Experts Only, which is really embarrassing. They’ll say no a lot, and it’s okay, because you never know which song is going to land, and I think having the legitimacy behind you of getting signed to labels and having these artists see your name a lot was really helpful in the beginning.”
Best Songs to Start With
Released this past January through Casablanca Records, this woozy tech house heater is Hollander’s highest streaming song to date.
This 2024 release on the venerable Nervous Records finds Hollander stating that “all my friends are hot, and they only dance to techno” before the track gives way to rave sirens and she eventually comes back to say advise that the tongue in cheek lyrics are “literally all a joke.”
Released via Insomniac Records in 2025, “I Look Good” is an urgent, ominous, confident ode to looking good from the front, from the back, from the side, and “on your mind.”
What’s Next for Hollander
Hollander is working on an EP she’ll likely release next year, and in the meantime will be busy with a slew of summer shows. Her upcoming tour dates including sets at Charleston’s High Tide Music & Arts Festival, Bonnaroo, Electric Forest, Lollapalooza, Elements, Experts Only Festival, Breakaway Utah, Huluween and more, along with myriad headlining club sets.
She says that while touring can be difficult, she makes it work by “constantly reminding myself how lucky I am to do this job” and also using her visualization skills to embody the feeling of being a world famous DJ. “I just act as if and pretend I’m the person I want to be. I really like believe in it.” She’s also building momentum by creating specific monthly goals, posting consistently and — as at summer camp, the family garag, the frat party and all the big moments that have followed — “making sure my sets are really good, even if I’m just playing to 20 people at the opening.”
Past Billboard Up-and-Coming Dance Artists of the Month
