Fresh off a breakout summer run filled with massive performances at festivals like Bonnaroo and Electric Forest, one of bass music’s latest rising talents, COSTA, is stepping into a bold new era of sound.
After emerging onto the scene through a deep collection of viral SoundCloud flips, the New York-born, DMV-based producer is bringing his fusion of dubstep, hip-hop, and pop to his first official original release, You Got Me featuring Baltimore duo Fortune Favor.
Arriving through Monstercat, You Got Me blends Fortune Favor’s catchy, nostalgic vocals with an explosion of heavy-hitting bass, capturing the essence of COSTA’s production while setting the tone for what’s to come.
“The timing felt right for this release because of everything that unfolded in the lead-up to it: the remixes, the streams, the shows. It’s been a wild year, and it just really felt like this was the moment to introduce the world to my own music. This track came together so seamlessly, but truth is, I’ve also had a couple records sitting finished for a while.”
While the records were finished and ready, COSTA was in no rush to push out an original just to feed the release cycle.
“For me, it’s never been about rushing to release something just to check a box. There’s more than one way to build a career as a young artist, and it was important to me to make sure the foundation felt right first and foremost. I’d already cultivated an audience through flips, but stepping out as an artist in my own right, building out a creative world I was really proud of, felt like something that I needed to earn on my own terms.”
That patience made his arrival on Monstercat feel like an authentic opening chapter rather than a rushed attempt to capitalize on online attention.
“Releasing this track through Monstercat carries a lot of weight for me too. It’s such a powerhouse label across electronic music, and getting to be part of that lineage with my first original feels less like a single milestone and more like the start of something bigger.”
That deliberate groundwork makes sense when looking at the remix run that came before it. COSTA essentially taught himself how to produce bass music by taking records people already loved and figuring out how to re-engineer them to hit hard in a live set.
“Remixing was basically my education in electronic music. I’ve never had any formal training. It was all trial and error, and just running things back until they worked. Flipping other people’s records taught me the technical stuff: what makes a drop actually smack, how to treat a vocal, all of it. But more than that, it taught me what I actually gravitate toward in this space.”
As his bootlegs started picking up millions of plays, he stopped listening just for nostalgia and began hunting for specific hooks and melodies that could anchor an entirely new song.
“When I first began producing bass music, I started putting what I call my A&R ears on with every flip. I began really paying attention to the tonality, whether the melody was doing something interesting, whether there was a moment in the vocal I could actually build a world around, and so on. There was this stretch early on where I pivoted hard into pop. I did five remixes in three weeks, stuff like Britney Spears and Timbaland hits, and they all blew up pretty fast. That’s when I really started to hone in on what my style actually was: something digestible that everyone could enjoy, but still completely unpredictable. I never really knew where I was gonna take a song once I started it. One idea just cascaded into the next, and it usually ended up somewhere I never planned for it to go. That process still informs my approach to this day. It’s intentional in an unintentional way, sort of like the butterfly effect.”
That run gave COSTA a public testing ground to hone his instincts before asking his growing fanbase to buy into original material.
“The more I leaned into that, the more I realized I wasn’t trying to make music that fit into one genre or another. I wanted to take what I had learned from the worlds of hip-hop, pop, and beyond and push those elements into bass music. Every remix became a kind of test, and not everything hit, which was fine. Not every song needs to. It’s more about the range of what I’m experimenting with than every single song landing every single time. By the time I got to releasing my originals, I already had a pretty clear picture of what my sound actually was, because I had basically spent a year stress-testing it on other artists’ music first.”
Coming up through hip-hop rather than following a strict dubstep path left him with an open slate, unbothered by genre rules or standard arrangements.
“Overall, I honestly think not coming from a traditional bass background has actually helped me really define my sound in this category as somewhat undefinable. I was learning the genre and making music in it at the same time, so I never got stuck thinking there was only one way it was supposed to sound. I think of it like growing a new branch on a tree instead of planting a whole new one. The roots, the actual heart of the sound, stay the same. I’m just bringing my own vision into it.”
You Got Me pulls those different worlds under one roof, letting catchy pop melodies, hip-hop rhythm, and heavy UK dubstep come together for a cohesive sonic experience that showcases every side of his artistry.
“With ‘You Got Me,’ I wanted the listener to be able to feel all three of those worlds at once: hip-hop, that 2010s pop nostalgia, UK dubstep, without being able to pull any one of them apart from the others. You’re nostalgic and getting hit with a high-energy drop in the same breath, but it doesn’t feel like bouncing between genres. It just feels like one cohesive sound, one moment.”
For COSTA, capturing that balance was essential for setting the tone of the catalog he plans to build.
“It mattered a lot that my first original captured all of that. I’ve never wanted to be boxed into one style, and honestly, I love catching people off guard with whatever is about to come out of the speaker next. I built it to sound like everything I grew up on and everything I taught myself, all living in the same place at the same time: high-energy, emotional, but still feeling fresh.”
Not only did he want the record to capture each influence, but he wanted it to resonate with the listeners who first found him on SoundCloud while giving newcomers an easy gateway into the heavier side of his sound.
“Ultimately, I wanted it to hit for bass heads who’ve been with me since the remix days, but still feel like an easy way in for anyone just stepping into the bass side of what I do for the first time. That’s kind of always been the goal for me, even beyond this one song. Not picking a lane, just building my own.”
Teaming up with Fortune Favor then gave him his first true collaborative experience inside the studio, with the duo’s vocal ideas immediately clicking with his vision.
“This was actually my very first time linking up with a vocalist/artist directly, so I had zero idea what to expect going into the experience, but working with Fortune Favor clicked instantly. The guys are local to the DMV scene, out in Baltimore, only about 40 minutes from where I was living in college at the time. They first sent over a vocal pack pulling from 2010s pop, and I was hooked the second I heard it. I started writing basically on the spot and, before I knew it, had the first version of ‘You Got Me’ finished in under three hours.”
Once the initial framework was down, they kept trading ideas until every piece of the song locked into place.
“From there, we hopped on calls, mapping out where to push the record next and letting our diverse backgrounds collide into a fusion we were all really hyped about. Dropping my debut single on a label like Monstercat, and doing so alongside Fortune Favor, was just surreal. I’m grateful we got to bring this one to life together.”
That hands-on approach directly impacts his live sets. When The Daily Frequency first caught up with him at Bonnaroo, he was already treating the crowd as an essential sounding board for unreleased tracks.
“Testing music live is honestly one of my favorite parts of the whole process. I’ll drop an unreleased track in a set and just watch how the room reacts: are hands going up, is everyone locked into the pocket, is there a switch-up that catches them off guard, or is there a moment where it just dips? Those reactions are so valuable. It’s real-time feedback that can tell me things about a track I can’t always catch in the studio by myself, no matter how many times I run it back.”
Then if a song misses the mark on stage, he brings the problem back to the studio instead of tossing the idea aside.
“If a track doesn’t hit the way I expected it to, I don’t consider it a catastrophe, and it doesn’t mean that I’m going to just scrap it altogether. Instead, it’s more of a moment for me to be like, ‘Okay, why didn’t this land with the crowd, and how do I turn it into something that will actually move the room?’ I think of the process like a push and pull: my imagination and artistic vision on one side, and what the audience is actually giving back on the other. To me, it’s all about figuring out how to meet in the middle without losing what made the idea feel special in the first place. That’s the work I bring back into the studio with me.”
While You Got Me set the foundation, COSTA didn’t wait long to reveal what else he had locked in the chamber. A month after its release, he made his debut on Deadbeats for his second official single, Dimension, delivering a gritty, wonky bass anthem that pushed his sound even deeper into new territories.
“It really doesn’t slow down from here. If anything, we’re actually speeding up. I actually just dropped my Deadbeats debut, with my second single Dimension. The track is a whole different side of my sound and is the perfect follow-up to my first original.”
Backed by a solo headline tour and upcoming appearances at Wakaan Music Festival, Hulaween, Freaky Deaky, and Cyclops Cove with Subtronics, COSTA heads into the rest of the year focused on road-testing more music and continuing to introduce his own world.
“Beyond music, I’m on the road basically nonstop through the rest of the year. I’m playing at the Roxy in LA next week, hitting cities all over on my headline run, and closing everything out with some massive ones: Hulaween, Freaky Deaky, and Cyclops Cove with Subtronics in December. This whole year’s just been one first after another for me, in the best way. I’m just trying to enjoy the ride and see where it takes me next. There’s only more to come.”
