Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

Houston-born, Los Angeles-based producer/DJ KAYZO, née Hayden Capuozzo, is one of the fastest-rising electronic artists of this decade. From his humble beginnings as an eager student at the Icon Collective music production school in L.A. to his official debut as the winner of Insomniac Events’ Discovery Project competition in 2012, KAYZO has since graduated from budding producer to breakthrough artist in just over five years. Recognized as one of Billboard Dance’s 100 Artists of 2018, KAYZO is today a bona fide global act.

His bass-fluid, shapeshifting sound and bold take on production has come to define KAYZO’s electrifying style and creatively experimental direction, as best captured on OVERLOAD, his debut artist album. Released January 2018 on his own Welcome Records imprint, distributed by Ultra Music, and counting more than 13 million streams on Spotify alone, OVERLOAD encapsulates the new KAYZO sound: a stimulating, cross-genre blend of rock theatrics and electronic futurism.

These days, he’s taking the electronic-rock hybrid to new ground. In May 2018, he remixed the 2000 alt-metal smash hit “Last Resort” from nu metal icons Papa Roach. Dubbed a “real smasher” by Billboard, the remix has amassed more than 5 million Spotify streams. Elsewhere, the dubstep monster “Wake Up,” his collaboration with RIOT, counts more than 13 million streams on Spotify, with an additional 3 million on SoundCloud. KAYZO has continued to blend the genre of rock and electronic music with releases “Fake Fake Fake” featuring XO Sad and a highly anticipated song with Underoath titled “Wasted Space.”

KAYZO’s versatile sound—high-energy melodies bestrewn with pummeling beats—defies genres and challenges sonic boundaries: In one single song, he’ll traverse heavy metal via shredding guitar solos, dubstep-heavy bass, hardstyle-fueled aggression, and hypnotizing psytrance loops. His flexibility as a producer has earned him official releases with all the top dogs in electronic music and has garnered him collaborations with and remix duties for electronic giants like DJ Snake, Steve Aoki, and SLANDER, among many others. Most recently, he’s joined the coveted roster of Ultra Music, where he’ll take the KAYZO sound to new heights.

A tastemaker in his own right, KAYZO founded his own artist-run imprint, Doghouse Recordings, in 2016, which he later relaunched as Welcome Records in 2017. He also hosts his biweekly Doghouse Radio show, which airs every other Friday at 4pm PT/7pm ET on SiriusXM Channel 730 as part of Insomniac Radio.

On the live front, KAYZO’s genre-defying DJ sets and “high-octane performances” (Billboard) have gained him a dedicated international following. To date, he’s performed across the world’s top venues and festival stages including Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Tomorrowland, EDC Las Vegas, Electric Zoo, Voodoo, Parookaville, ÎleSoniq, and more. In 2018, he launched the 39-date Overload Tour, his inaugural headlining North American trek in support of his OVERLOAD album. He’s also hosted numerous Doghouse Takeover shows—large-scale events based on KAYZO’s Doghouse brand—across the country, including a sold-out performance at the iconic Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles in 2017. In 2019, KAYZO will expand the Doghouse Takeover on a national scale.

Through his fusion of genres and sounds, which seamlessly flows through hardstyle, trap, bass, dubstep, rock, metal, and beyond, KAYZO has crafted a style that is ultimately and inimitably his own. Welcome to the Doghouse.

“Did Emo Nite single-handedly bring back pop-punk, or did it just so happen to ride one of the first waves of late-‘90s nostalgia before it became TikTok-ified? (We’re going to side with the former.)”

–  Time Out

As Rolling Stone observed a few years ago, “Emo Night Vindicated the Scene.”

Since they threw their first party at an East L.A. dive bar, Morgan Freed and T.J. Petracca,  and  a  dedicated  crew  of regular attendees, built Emo Nite into a phenomenon. Top-tier emo artists, old and new, curate playlists and perform, with guest lists boasting members of blink-182, All Time Low, Dashboard Confessional, The Maine, and Good Charlotte. Scene-friendly pop culture mavericks often participate, like past attendees Post Malone, Demi Lovato, Machine Gun Kelly, and Skrillex.

It’s all too easy to forget that before the first Emo Nite in December 2014, “emo” was a joke.

Somehow on its journey from a melodic post-hardcore subgenre, built on earnest emotional expression, to a mainstream moniker assigned to anything remotely angsty, “emo” became a dirty word. Despite the positive impact ushered in by waves of bands, from the crucial “Revolution Summer” and Sunny Day Real Estate through Taking Back Sunday and My Chemical Romance, accepting “emo” as a dismissive designation or identity invited polite embarrassment and even scorn.

But Freed and Petracca grew up loving the music associated with emo and the people like them who similarly embraced outsider art and subculture, regardless of changing fashions or pretentious snobbery. Petracca told The New Yorker the idea behind the first

Emo Nite celebration was to center a happy, communal experience on the music they once listened to when they were upset and alone.

“I sang Dashboard Confessional at karaoke at a friend’s birthday party and thought it was super fun to go out with friends and listen to music we actually liked,” recalls Petracca, who met Freed when the pair worked at a creative agency together. “Every other club in LA played EDM, Top 40, or hip-hop. We always found ourselves pre-gaming with emo and pop-punk music before we went out.”

Freed knew a bartender at the Short Stop in Echo Park and convinced him to let them throw a party on a random, rainy Tuesday. They invited friends via Facebook; double the bar’s capacity turned up. “We decided to see how far we could take it,” Petracca says. “‘Who would be the craziest guest?’ We invited Mark Hoppus, and he came! He did our first one at Echoplex, which was our third party ever.”

“There’s no disconnect between the artist and fan,” Freed points out. “I think that’s brought people closer to the music. It created a really strong sense of community, at a time when emo wasn’t ‘cool.’”

There may be a surprise acoustic set or even a full-band performance, but ultimately, it’s about the experience. Emo Nite turned a party into a community, reclaiming the spirit of how the scene began.

It’s now a recurring event thrown by dozens of friends in over 30 cities in the United States. Emo Nite runs full-day festivals and curates coveted performance spots at Coachella, Life is Beautiful, and Firefly. Freed and Petracca launched successful clothing collaborations with brands like OBEY, Urban Outfitters, PLEASURES, The Hundreds, Rose in Good Faith, Market, and OWSLA.

“A larger promoter told us the shelf life of a club night in Los Angeles was two years,” Freed says, marveling at Emo Nite’s staying power. “A hundred percent of it is the people that go to it. This music makes people feel connected. The energy of it is so special. You get a group of people together who look different, but they have this thing in common. We started seeing friend groups form really, really quickly. People met their significant others at these events. The community really trusts each other.”

“Emo Nite LA has become an essential gathering point for fans of emo, pop-punk, and related styles,” Rolling Stone noted.

In October 2021, Emo Nite’s founders threw Emo Nite Vegas Vacation, a three-day event headlined by Avril Lavigne and Machine Gun Kelly, with Sleeping With Sirens, MOD SUN, 3OH!3, and more.

“What Emo Nite does better than any of their competitors is they make ‘emo culture’ feel both nostalgic and brand new,” The Summer Set’s Brian Logan Dales told Forbes, in a profile which included professions of love from members of Papa Roach, Underoath, and State Champs. “You can go to an Emo Nite with your best friends and sing along to old songs you grew up with, and at the same time, discover a brand-new artist who’s making music today because they grew up on that very same music as you. They’ve taken the emo of the past and helped it forge a new path for the future.”

As emo reenters popular culture with a blend of adoring nostalgia and optimistic forward-thinking,  Emo  Nite  remains  an  authentic  space  to  celebrate  diversity, experience passionate catharsis, and champion authentic expression. Emo Nite isn’t a band or a DJ crew. It’s an idea, one as simple as the urge to throw a party for a beloved style of music. Often imitated but never truly duplicated, Emo Nite’s founders and supporters are fond of saying, “If you don’t see the grave, it ain’t our rave.”

“There’s a lot of ownership from our community of the event itself and the Emo Nite brand,” Petracca says. “It’s about breaking down that barrier of ‘Look at me, it’s all about me.’ No, it’s about us, together, in this room. It belongs to every single person that comes through the door.”

The co-founders continue to look ahead. “Emo Nite definitely impacted culture,” Freed notes. “But we have no plans to stop changing the way we view the evolution and

expansion of the genre.”