Ode to Bedroom Dancing

With queer electropop artist HYD's new album Hold Onto Me Infinity

Jun 02, 2026

This post’s subtitle could be interpreted to mean that I am referring to HYD as a queer artist who makes electropop or as an artist who makes queer electropop. And the truth is that Hayden Dunham (who releases music under the name HYD) is both: they are a queer musician making queer (and I’d argue trans) electropop.1 And they just released a new album titled Hold Onto Me Infinity. And I think we should all play it loudly in our bedrooms and dance around by ourselves.

Hyd — HYD photographed by Meriem Bennani

What Makes Music Queer or Trans

But Sebastian, how can music be trans or queer? Isn’t that reductive or overly centering the artist’s experience of gender or sexuality? Ah, I’m glad you asked :) Because it is true that some artists from other marginalized communities have resisted having their music labelled or defined by their own identities and backgrounds. I’m thinking specifically here of my friends’ now defunct band Potty Mouth,2 and former guitarist Phoebe Harris saying “we’re an all-girl band, but that’s not a genre.” There’s also been much written about the term “Black music,” and whether it is a useful and/or appropriate label (see for example this piece by Cord Jefferson in The Root). It’s also highly possible that some queer or trans musicians would object to me or anyone describing their music as queer or trans.

But to be clear I’m not describing HYD’s music as queer and trans just because Hayden Dunham is queer and (maybe?) trans3 — though that’s part of it. There is also just something trans about their music. I don’t want to get too far into this, because I don’t intend for this to be too long of a long read for y’all. But if you check out this conversation between Dunham and trans multimedia artist and writer Tourmaline, I think you’ll get what I’m saying. For example, when describing their brand new album Hold Onto Me Infinity, Dunham says the album is “the thing that has been supportive of me connecting with and celebrating what it is to have a body.” In the interview, Dunham and Tourmaline get into exploration of the immaterial and material, themes of transformation, and what it means and takes to make one’s imagined futures real… these are queer and trans people talking about queer and trans art. Full stop. (I should also note that Dunham also creates other forms of art, including sculpture and multimedia performance pieces.) And Dunham described their 2021 self-titled EP to Them Magazine as “an ecosystem that really supports embodiment, acceptance, and action.” Trans. (Imagine me saying that as Lesley Stahl)4

Tourmaline and HYD (Hayden Dunham) photographed by Bobbi Salvör Menuez for 032c.

I love it when the Earth speaks. I really look to the Earth for advice about how to be here and how to integrate—things like grief, transformation, new forms of being, looking at the petals dropped from bouquets in my house that then transform into seeds. -Hayden Dunham (aka HYD)

In an interview with Justin Moran for the substack Who’s That, Dunham spoke about their creative process in a way that reminded me very much of my own experience of awakening into awareness of my gender and transness:

Did you set out to make a specific album, or did you start at a certain place and let the music unfold naturally?
It informed me more than I informed it. It was more like a listening practice than a talking practice. I didn’t start with an idea and try to execute that idea. It was more listening for what came through, but what came through was so completely unexpected. It was not in my mind’s eye what I was making until it was already made. I feel like it almost made itself. I didn’t have perspective on it until it was all done, really. This happens with work with me sometimes, especially with lyrics, where lyrics will come and I’ll think, I have no idea where that came from or where that’s going, and then a year later it will be crystal clear what it’s talking about. But I think there’s a larger dialog happening that I’m engaged in that I’m not always cognitively aware of. It’s not from my brain, it’s from a different part of me.

Later in that interview, Dunham shared that Hold Onto Me Infinity speaks to questions of life and death through their exploration of the idea that “we’re not limited to this one form or this one story or this one way of being,” which in this case explicitly is speaking to post-death, but also: trans.

Queerness and transness are present throughout the album’s lyrics, as well. Thematically the songs largely take on existential quandaries and grief following the losses of Dunham’s collaborator and romantic partner (and trans music icon) SOPHIE, as well as her brother, though HYD expands into other themes as well. Sometimes it feels as if HYD is singing to her lost loved ones and sometimes as if she is singing to their/our communities more broadly. Take one of the boppiest tracks on the album, “Make Me Believe”: to me, the lyrics seem very much like a trans person speaking about transness to trans people.

I look to the clouds above
When I think I've had enough
And I see you holding on
And it makes me believe in love

When out of hope, can't go on
Your strength can make me believe in love
And there's no more light in the world
Your strength can make me believe in love
Down on my knees
Your strength can make me believe in love

I know that trans people’s persistence (in the past, in the present, and in the future I envision) is a huge part of my own ability to endure and believe in love.

So yes, I’m going to say HYD recently released an album of queer and trans electropop and I want to share that with you and in so doing, I am going to sing the virtues of bedroom dancing. Because I want y’all to turn this on and dance around in the privacy of your home.

This post is part of my recurring series of music shares and reflections, generally focused on trans artists and messages or experiences related to survival during difficult times. Like all my substack content, these posts will be coming at intermittent intervals for the foreseeable future given my fairly recent entry into parenthood.

Bedroom Dancing as an Antidote to “Political Depression”

I titled this piece in reference to the Le Tigre song “Eau D’Bedroom Dancing.” Le Tigre is an iconic riot grrrrl band formed in the late 90s, and this song (and the band overall) has long been one of my favorites. It’s a love song to either/both music and/or dancing alone in your room.

When Le Tigre did a reunion tour in 2023, they closed a lot of their shows with the song, and I found a clip of frontwoman Kathleen Hanna introducing the song. The sound quality on that recording is obviously not great, so if you’re not familiar with “Eau D’Bedroom Dancing,” listen to it on bandcamp first:

And here’s the video. It opens with Hanna saying “it can be fun to sing about PTSD,” in reference to the song they had just finished playing, “Keep On Living.” She then goes on to acknowledge how shitty the world is and how easy it can be in the face of awfulness to say “why bother?” She dedicates “Eau d’Bedroom to Dancing” to “those moments that you have something that you really like to do that make you remember why we fight.”

In the video, Hanna describes making music as an “antidote” to being “politically depressed” witnessing (or experiencing) all the harms humanity is committing against each other and this world.

Amen.

Here’s a short off-the-top-of-my-head list of what I think bedroom dancing offers us: letting loose, movement, feeling ourselves, connecting to music without constraint, endorphins, playfulness, sexiness (if we want), fantasy (close your eyes and see where you go), creativity, fun.

Bedroom dancing offers us an experience of being alive and free, and as Kathleen Hanna reminded us — moments like that both directly combat the deadening despair and ground us in what makes staying alive worthwhile.

Hold Onto Me Infinity by HYD

Hyd - Hold Onto Me Infinity — Album art for *Hold Onto Me Infinity by HYD*

And y’all, all I want to do when I play HYD’s new album is dance around my home. Which it turns out is true for Dunham as well. “When I listen to this record, I can't help but move and dance,” they said in an interview with Anthony Carew of International Pop Underground. Amanda Hatfield at Brooklyn Vegan wrote that the album is “full of bangers”: “It starts with two of the move irresistible slices of art-pop I’ve heard all year and never lets up.”

The reviews used the words “effervescent” and “ebullient.”5 Dunham themself said of listening to the record, “It’s almost like, on a cellular level, all my cells are vibrating.” I feel all of this when I put it on.

And part of what makes the album so perfect for bedroom dancing, in my opinion, is the weighty material. HYD is digging into incredibly significant (and likely traumatic) losses, exploring metaphysical questions about what happens after death (to the deceased and to those left in the realm of the living). They’re reflecting on their own complicated experience of having a body (or their body in particular, perhaps) and acknowledging the weight of the world. They’re grieving. And they’re doing this through infectious highly danceable electro-pop.

“This album, whilst holding this depth of loss that I have been experiencing, also holds this levity. And buoyancy.” -Hayden Dunham AKA HYD

A really good bedroom dance soundtrack is going to facilitate wild and unrestrained emotional expression, too. Stuff that allows you to have a good cry while you sing and bounce along.6 Rage out while you jump on the bed and slide down the hall. Make whatever ugly facial expression you want. And I mean “ugly” in a complimentary way.

So crank up HYD’s new album and bop around in whatever privacy you have in whatever ways are accessible to you. Bandcamp player is below and you can stream it through the bandcamp site or app and/or purchase digital or vinyl forms.

(It’s also available on qobuz and wherever you purchase or stream music.)

Also to be clear, HYD isn’t new. Hold Onto Me Infinity is their sophomore album. They have an excellent full-length called Clearing in addition to the aforementioned self-titled EP Hyd. ~And~ they used to create music under the project moniker QT with SOPHIA and A.C. Cook.

And I want to lift up one more piece of music from them, because it’s how I found myself really digging into their music recently: their cover of Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms” which I am soooo into.

By the way, if you want to support them, check them out live or scoop some merch on their website. They also have a substack they haven’t updated since last year but where you can be a paid subscriber for $7.77 a month, which seems like a nice way to patronize someone who is facilitating all of this trans and queer bedroom dancing.

Weathering the Storm with Dr. Sebastian Barr

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