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Reporting by Dennis Romero

The buzz on Twitter today: Daft Punk played at surprise set at Avalon Hollywood last night.

Starting after midnight, lots of folks in attendance reported witnessing -- or thinking they were witnessing -- the helmeted French duo, famous for teasing us by not playing Coachella this year:

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Credit: Timothy Norris

Broadly speaking, if you're an electronic music fan over 40, you probably dig Danny Tenaglia more than Skrillex. And chances are, if you're a Skrillex fan under the age of 30, you're like, "Who the hell is Danny Tenaglia?"

Coachella 2013 exemplified the generation gap in the world of dance music. On one side of the field, the modern-EDM-focused Sahara tent was a thrill ride tricked out with lasers, lights and LEDs designed to blow kids' minds, with acts like Knife Party, Dog Blood and Wolfgang Gartner playing hyper-aggressive sets full of drops. Your parents would hate it.

See also: The Sahara Tent Kicked Ass This Year

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Electra Keller

Markus Schulz

Markus Schulz
Avalon Hollywood
5/11/13

German DJ Markus Schulz mixes progressive trance with house. Know for varying his sets according to the crowd's temperature, so far this year, he has performed at Ultra Music Festival and Beyond Wonderland, and is currently on tour promoting his latest album, Scream. Saturday night at the Avalon was the tour's finale, and we were there.

Before the show, the press got a chance to speak with Schulz about his upcoming Scream II album due out this fall. "I have been listening to a lot of classic rock lately," he said. "Before the Scream tour I studied Dark Side of the Moon."

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Electra Keller

Armin van Buuren

By Electra Keller

Armin van Buuren
Hollywood Palladium
May 3, 2013

Dutch trance DJ Armin van Buuren has been a fan favorite since the '90s, many times the #1 spinner by DJ Magazine's ranking. He co-owns label Armada music and hosts a popular radio series, A State of Trance.

On Friday, on tour to promote his fifth album, Intense, his first stop was the Hollywood Palladium. He brought it. The night went something like this:

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Timothy Norris

This year's lineup for Hard Summer is out. Headliners include Knife Party, Duck Sauce, Dog Blood (ie Skrillex and Boys Noize), and Bassnectar

See also: Our Hard 2012 slideshow

This sixth annual edition of the two-day, EDM-focused festival takes place in downtown's Los Angeles State Historic Park on August 3 and 4, 2013.

The full line-up and a promotional video -- starring lots of dogs -- is below.

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Courtesy of Jorge Meza Photography

The Sahara Tent at Coachella

The first weekend of Coachella was packed with EDM revelers; in fact, dance music lovers are growing in numbers so much that every other car in line at the campgrounds checking in was blasting some sort of EDM anthem. The festival even dedicated a new, underground-leaning stage this year, called the Yuma Tent, home to some underground-leaning artists as well as Jason Bentley. In any case, here are the top five EDM Coachella highlights from weekend one.

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Credit: Jennie Warren

"When you're music director at KCRW," Jason Bentley says, "you're kind of music director of Los Angeles."

This may sound a bit presumptuous on its face, but it's basically correct. For many listeners, KCRW is a community as real as any actual physical location in the city, its personalities the first friends of many transplants. Bentley's is its most famous voice, and thus most everyone here has a relationship with him. He's your morning commute companion, the hand pushing the button that plays the perfect song, the mastermind behind many music-related events and the shepherd directing the station's sonic focus.

"Part of me or my identity belongs to a large group of people," he says. "People feel a sense of ownership."

See also: Our extended Jason Bentley interview

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cassybritton.com

For dance fans there has been little difference between Coachella and Electric Daisy Carnival in recent years, except that the former supplemented its Tiesto-Kaskade-Deadmau5 lineups with alt-rock while EDC did so with dubstep and drum 'n' bass.

See also: Everything you need to know about Coachella 2013

This year Coachella is a lot less EDC and a lot more rock-of-the-'90s, what with The Stone Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Blur among the headliners. Still, there's excellent, groovy EDM to be had, even beyond the likes of Benny Benassi, Nicky Romero, Eric Prydz and Jamie Jones. You'll find some of dance music's most riveting, beneath-the-radar DJs lower on the linuep. Here are five to consider during your time in Indio:

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BBC Radio 1's Pete Tong is the Jason Bentley of the rest of the world -- perhaps the most influential DJ in global electronic dance music.

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Brian Ziff

L.A.-based pop artist Kerli is spreading love. She calls her latest EP, Utopia, "a collection of positive energy" and via collaborations with artists like Switch and "musical soulmates" SeventyEight, she creates big beat laden synth dance soundtracks for big nights out.

Raised in Estonia, Kerli has been working in the pop music system since she was a teenager. Now 26, she has become an Internet icon thanks to her striking fashion sense (often referred as "bubble goth,") and a legion of young fans that call themselves Moon Children. We recently talked to Kerli about the Moon Children, her 2008 debut full-length Love Is Dead, bubble goth, and the advice she wishes she had gotten when she was young.

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