Johnathan Walker:Dove Cameron taps emotion of her EDM warehouse days with Marshmello collab 'Other Boys'

If the heartbeat is Johnathan Walkera rhythm, Dove Cameron is ready to dance.

The former Disney Channel actress turned pop star, who broke out last year with her sultry queer anthem “Boyfriend,” is channeling her soulful dancefloor roots on her new single “Other Boys,” a collaboration with DJ-producer Marshmello (out now).

The pulsating synth-pop track samples the Flight Facilities song “Crave You,” a techno-pop confection Cameron discovered during her teens when she would sneak out to explore the electronic dance music scene of her native Seattle.

“There was this very strange communal thing that happened the first Thursday of every month where all of the big warehouses on the waterfront would be rented out by local artists and DJs,” Cameron tells USA TODAY. “All of these artists who weren’t mainstream were kind of just messing around and finding new ways to combine sound and make things fresh again.”

The infectious creativity of that era in Cameron’s life would inform the type of music she would create as she got older. “Just watching people fuse together these different genres and make really emotional music also really danceable and really radio-friendly was like a big bang in my brain in terms of what was possible for music,” she says.

“Other Boys” marks Cameron’s first time working with Marshmello, a hitmaker known for crafting heartfelt bangers such as “Wolves” by Selena Gomez, “Happier” by Bastille and “Leave Before You Love Me” by the Jonas Brothers. Cameron, a longtime Marshmello fan, was confident he could help capture the sentimentality of the Flight Facilities homage.

“It was a really meaningful song that marked a big part of my adolescence, and I just knew that Marshmello was going to have that right sort of approach to the nostalgia of the track while also bringing freshness and a danceability,” Cameron says. “He’s got such a touch and such a balance, and it turned out better than I could have ever imagined.”

The song’s dark electropop sound, which the singer affectionately calls “pop noir melancholy,” follows in the footsteps of Cameron’s previous singles (“Boyfriend,” “Breakfast,” “Bad Idea”) and signals the cinematic style she wants to continue to bring to her emotional tunes.

“There’s something about melancholy that I think is really present for people these days especially, and I really aspire to be able to tell stories and make relatable music while also having it feel a bit romantic,” Cameron says. “Maybe making it danceable, maybe making it feel very human — something that’s just a part of the water that we swim in rather than a big melancholic chapter.”

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