Since their breakout moment with Dum Dee Dum, Keys N Krates have steadily carved a lane of their own—rooted in hip hop but fluid enough to stretch across trap, pop, and now, house. With their new label Odd Soul Sounds, the Toronto trio step into a new chapter that feels more self-assured than ever. Their debut release on the imprint, RUAFREAK, strips things back to bass, drums, and instinct, blending tribal rhythms with that familiar swing that’s always underpinned their work.
In this interview, they reflect on the arc from maximalist beat drops to groove-heavy minimalism, the enduring influence of R&B, and why they’re less interested in trends than in crafting something they’ll still want to play ten years from now.
Looking back at your early releases like Dum Dee Dum, how do you hear that era now in relation to what you’re doing with Odd Soul Sounds?
It’s just very different. It was a different time in our lives. It was an era where it seemed really fun to do this version of instrumental hip hop beats in front of people and create a dance party. Our tastes have become groovier over the years and what we are doing now feels like a landscape where we can explore where we are at now musically; but also tastes and tendencies we’ve always had and just never had the platform to explore. For example, the kind of dance floor we trying to create now welcomes our love for RnB, hence the record we did with Rochelle Jordan on Defected a couple of summers ago. We can be energetic and spastic now but also groovy and soulful whereas we used to be just beholden to a raucous kind of energy that wore thin on us after a while.
Your sound has always evolved but there’s a throughline of rhythm and swing. What’s shaped your progression over the years and how has your approach to production matured?
The hip hop influence has always been there and always will be; and now rather than applying that too quirky instrumental trap stuff, we get to apply to it to house music. The evolution to house was sort of slow, gradual and organic. Once we were trying to get away from doing trap stuff, we were leaning into pop stuff, and there was this record we did with BIBI called “Take it off” that we loved and it sort of eased us into doing house at slower tempo. We eventually found ourselves naturally making stuff at faster tempos, and starting to find our way in more proper house music through messing around and of course studying people we’ve always admired.
RUAFREAK feels deliberately raw and percussive. Was there a conscious decision to strip things back sonically and let the groove speak for itself?
Yeah absolutely. We love drum and bassline driven tracks, especially on the tribal tip; when they’re done a certain way. We really wanted to just spotlight the vocal and support it with something that felt right. We tried more melodic bass lines, and totally different beats, but once we started focusing on the percussion and having the bassline just rumble and support the whole thing; that felt like the thing for this tune.
You’ve mentioned before that you approach production like a band. How did that translate in a collaborative setting with Afrique Like Me and 96Vibe, who each bring their own rhythmic signatures?
It was like having more band members! Everyone’s talented and has great taste. Afrique cats are rockstar djs and nice in the studio and have amazing ideas, and 96vibe is a beast of tribal/afro house producer, and then you have the three of us, so it was really distilling everyone’s ideas down into something simple that felt right for everyone. There’s definitely a big through line between what we all like so it was just about moving towards that mark and making sure that everyone was excited about it and playing it out.
Odd Soul Sounds leans into groove-heavy house with character. What does ‘character’ mean to you when you’re EQing or choosing sounds for a track like this?
Warmth, imperfection and idiosyncratic definitely come to mind. We wanted the percussion to feel live on this track, and we sampled a lot of different percussion from a lot of different places, so it was really about creating a common environment where everything could live together and sound cohesive.
Sampling and flip culture have always been part of your DNA. Are you still approaching sound design through that lens, even in more stripped, percussive material like this?
Ya absolutely. We are musicians as much as we are sample flippers and we love taking loops, flipping them, and then playing to them; very much blurring the line between flipping samples and playing. Flipping stuff particularly with this tribal stuff is great because you can use little fills that were played by amazing players and mess with them and build around them.
How important was it for your first release on Odd Soul Sounds to set a sonic benchmark, not just for the label but for your own future productions under this umbrella?
It was important to us that the first release be both clubby and catchy at the same time and we think we achieved that. Those are things that both part of our DNA. We are fans of pop music just as much as we are underground music so we really wanted to blend those two ideas. Although it’s an afro/tribal house record, it still feels very much to us like it intersects with a hip hop feel and that’s always important to us. There’s going to be a lot of different kind of tunes that come out on this label, but one of the through lines is they will always intersect with hip hop or rnb, even if at times in more subtle ways. We definitely aren’t a tribal house label. There’s already amazing labels like Club Bad (not that they’re limited to that) that do that and we want to bring something different to the table.
House music is constantly cycling through trends. What do you feel is missing from the current conversation and how are you trying to fill that space with Odd Soul Sounds?
Honestly we kind of feel like outsiders to all this so we just do our own thing and what feels right to us. We are really trying to make stuff now that we can play in five or ten years, so we aren’t that concerned with what else is going on. We just study the stuff that we love and kind of ignore everything we don’t; for better or for worse. We definitely think there can be more outside voices like us that respect the music but want to bring something different to it that will hopefully attract new people to listening to house and house adjacent stuff.
There’s a lot of genre-hopping in club culture right now. How do you stay grounded in your sound while still responding to what’s happening globally?
We are first and foremost guided by what we like and what excites us. We don’t stray into things we don’t understand because they’re the flavour of the month. We just make and play what we like. Of course we are always listening to other stuff and sometimes that can evolve our tastes but I think one of things that keeps us grounded is what kind of dance floor we want to have; one that’s not sleepy, but has energy and groove at the same time. There also has to be a certain soul (hence the name of the label and party) for us to like something, so that’s always something that’s going to guide our tastes.