Them Jeans (Remixes) - The xx and Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Turning some of my favorite indie music into danceable jams is mind-blowing enough to get me to do what I tend to hate doing most, which is, well, dance. Still buzzed from a year of fantastic electro-dream pop releases and still reeling from this week's Leonid Meteor Shower, I was reminded of Jason Stewart, better known as Them Jeans, who is a Los Angeles-based DJ/Producer with whom I'm pretty much obsessed. Last winter he did a 6-month DJ residency at L.A.'s Natural History Museum playing "First Fridays," an institution we also have at some of NYC's cooler museums, where the first Friday of every month they transform the space into all-out dance floors so that hot paleontologists can talk nerdy to their music-loving friends while getting their swerve on next to dinosaur fossils. I wish Them Jeans would bring his magic to the East Coast to resuscitate the now defunct Starry Nights Jazz and turn the AMNH into one uber-romantic, uber-stellar cosmic dance party kissed ever so gently by the shimmery intergalactic lighting from the planets in the Hayden Planetarium. Not only is his great taste in music varied, but he also manages to remix lots of indie songs in upbeat ways so you can actually not feel weird playing them during appetizers for non-indie music loving guests at your indie rock dream wedding or during your house party in hopes the music will create the type of ambiance that will get your guests groovin' and movin' about the place... except, in a chill, loungey, downtempo "let's make out in the dark corner against the wall" sort of way, and not a coked out, riotous, Girl Talk "let's do some blow in the bathroom" kind of way. Either way could be fine, but I guess it really just depends on the mood.

In his reportoire, he's reimagined songs for the likes of Beach House, Yeasayer, Sigur Ros, Radiohead, Ratatat, and even Snoop Dogg. But the following two remixes are absolutely stunning interpretations and, of course, totally danceable versions of songs I already love. These should help get your party started right... and quickly, at that.

The xx - "Shelter" (Them Jeans Drum Edit) - [original]

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Soft Shock" (Them Jeans Acoustic Remix) - [original, acoustic]