Why It Matters
The shift underscores a broader trend of underground electronic artists courting commercial audiences, reshaping club culture and streaming economics.
Key Takeaways
- •Butterfly favors big‑room sound over Daphni’s experimental roots
- •Tracks prioritize predictable drops, targeting mainstream club playlists
- •Few songs retain the quirky loops that defined earlier releases
- •Album mirrors industry pressure for overground, commercial EDM
- •Standout tracks hint at Snaith’s lingering avant‑garde instincts
Pulse Analysis
Dan Snaith has built a dual reputation as the melodic indie‑rock mind behind Caribou and the club‑oriented producer known as Daphni. The Daphni moniker emerged from his DJ decks, where off‑kilter loops and genre‑bending edits became a signature, especially on the critically praised 2023 album Cherry. That record balanced glassy synths with unexpected vocal shards, offering listeners a sense of discovery even as the tracks filled dance‑floor space. Snaith’s ability to toggle between cerebral pop and kinetic club music has kept him relevant across streaming platforms and festival line‑ups.
Butterfly abandons much of that exploratory spirit in favor of a streamlined, big‑room aesthetic. The production leans heavily on four‑on‑the‑floor kick patterns, bright basslines and instantly recognizable drops designed for festival lighting rigs and TikTok clips. By aligning with the current overground EDM formula, the album maximizes playlist placement and radio‑friendly appeal, but it also flattens the dynamic range that once set Daphni apart. Tracks such as “Waiting So Long” and “Clap Your Hands” exemplify this shift, delivering club‑ready momentum while offering little surprise beyond the expected hook.
The reception of Butterfly signals a crossroads for producers who straddle underground credibility and mainstream revenue. Listeners craving the unpredictable textures of earlier Daphni releases may push artists to re‑inject experimental moments, as seen in the brief flashes of “Talk to Me” and “Caterpillar.” If the electronic scene continues to reward scale over nuance, future albums could become homogenized, risking listener fatigue. Conversely, a renewed emphasis on hybrid tracks could restore the balance between commercial viability and artistic intrigue, keeping the dance floor both profitable and fresh.
Butterfly
Daphni – 2026
By Gio Santiago
Reviewed February 12, 2026
On the latest album from his DJ alias, Caribou’s Dan Snaith ups the tempo and doubles down on big‑room oomph, sacrificing some of the appealing eccentricity of his best work.
In Dan Snaith’s Daphni project, taste typically outpaces narrative. Off‑kilter loops do most of the talking; a track can be “about” nothing more than what it does to a room. This is music Snaith makes primarily to play in his DJ sets, with “slower, weirder” cuts reserved for the right club. That approach came to a peak on his last full‑length, Cherry. Each song was an eclectic singularity: precise, glassy, poignant, and cool as hell. Cherry unveiled like a mood overture: every winding synth line, chopped vocal shard, and sudden genre swerve felt like a distinct scene—time‑traveling without losing a grip on the floor.
On Butterfly, Snaith’s fifth album under the moniker, the Daphni project is still chiefly identified with his proclivities behind the decks. But Butterfly, unlike Cherry, promises technicolor dance‑floor certainty, the kind of clean, stadium‑ready churn that’s become the default for contemporary DJs who sell the underground as a feeling. Where he might’ve previously snuck in weirder cuts like “Cloudy” or “Ye Ye” for discerning clubgoers, here he trades in his cool chip for mainstream appeal. The problem with Butterfly isn’t that it’s functional. It’s that its function feels pre‑determined: the record moves like a sales pitch for what a Daphni album can cover in 2026, an immaculate presentation and walk‑through of dance‑music convention, rather than an unfolding journey where the destination remains unknown even to its creator.
Butterfly is Daphni’s attempt at serving overground house with an edgier toolkit: sub‑heavy four‑on‑the‑floor with flickers of acid, dub, and jazz. “Waiting So Long” barrels along at a techno‑leaning tempo while sticking to disco‑house basics—four‑on‑the‑floor, clean bass, and a vocal sample positioned like it’s supposed to be the emotional hinge. The track introduces its big idea and cashes it in immediately, which is why it falls flat: the hook is dropped in, looped, and left mostly unchanged. Then it hard‑cuts into “Napoleon’s Rock,” a sub‑minute jazz interlude that briefly interrupts the album’s 4/4 monoculture but refuses to act like a real pivot. There’s no meaningful handoff—no mood recalibration—just a quick palate wipe that clears the tongue without affecting the appetite. So when “Good Night Baby” arrives with its springy, bright arpeggios and high‑gloss positivity, it doesn’t read as contrast; it scans as a reset to the record’s marketability, engineered for video clips and crowd shots. The feeling isn’t released—it’s the crowded‑room annoyance of a tech bro squeezing past and spilling a drink all over me.
Butterfly’s club ecology is immediate: most of the album lives around that mid‑130s churn where mixing is effortless and momentum is guaranteed. “Clap Your Hands” and “Hang” arrive as efficient engines—tight percussion, bright surfaces, big‑room pacing; tracks that behave like they’ve already rehearsed their lighting cues. “Goldie” follows with a harder face—metallic, blunt, built around weight—and the title nods toward a UK lineage of rhythmic menace and soundsystem culture. But even here, Butterfly treats reference like a wardrobe: a darker texture put on for a scene, then swapped out before it can stain the record’s picturesque pastures.
The record gets interesting when it lets ugliness in. “Talk to Me” is the standout in that regard: acidic lines that feel less like nostalgia than a flare shot into fog, a vocal that sounds more like a ufologist’s plea than a conventional hook. “Invention” and “Caterpillar” are the closest we get to Daphni’s previous allure, a hint at a stranger album living at the edges. The former goes for weird directly, but it comes across as a one‑off attempt rather than an overarching statement. “Caterpillar” feels most akin to “Karplus,” and actually displays a full range of emotion, as opposed to the record’s cheaper thrills.
Butterfly comes up short because it mistakes scale for character. Its drops and hooks have been engineered for maximum lift instead of maximum surprise. We don’t need another late‑2010s/2020s “big tent” DJ circuit album. Dan Snaith has always treated Daphni as the version of himself that thinks with his hands rather than his head—fast decisions, loop logic, the practical poetry of a track that only needs to exist long enough to change a room’s oxygen. If Butterfly is going for emotion, at least make it a bit kitschy, for the weirder club observers. The flashes on “Talk to Me” and “Caterpillar” prove the unruly instinct is still intact—it’s just on a shorter leash. We are begging for electronic music that actually has a living, breathing pulse; one that dares to take a frayed vocal sample and glossy melody and shape that friction in real time, instead of rushing to the release. It’s something Snaith has proven before, and hopefully will again soon.
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