Alesso - The DJ King of Las Vegas

In a city where the nights are ruled by music, a twentysomething Swede is running the show.

- T. Cole Rachel

Giving credence to the notion that Sweden will somehow always produce the world’s best pop music, 24-year-old Alessandro Lindblad—better known as Alesso—has, over the course of the past four years, gone from playing small clubs in the U.K. to touring with Madonna, producing internationally game-changing hit singles like “Heroes (We Could Be),” and performing for crowds of more than 60,000 people. In addition to releasing an album in May of last year—the aptly titled Forever—and maintaining a rigorous global touring schedule, Alesso currently holds down a Vegas DJ residency at XS at the Wynn, one of the city’s biggest and most beloved clubs.

Did you always have a sense that you would make music?

Yeah, I was always the only one in my family that was crazy about music. Since I was five years old,I liked to perform and dance and sing Michael Jackson songs and that kind of stuff. I always wanted to be onstage. I danced a lot. Then I started playing piano. I was always surrounded by music, but just because it was my interest. I don’t come from a really musical family.

I knew I always wanted to do something with music, but I just didn’t know what until I found out about dance music. I’d heard dance music before, like ABBA, but this was a different kind of dance music. This was really cool and underground, and I got addicted to it. The whole DJ-culture scene back then was so underground, and there was nothing like that in Sweden. That was around the time YouTube came out, so I could YouTube everything. I was looking at that world through YouTube videos.

What came first for you? Was it decaying or making beats and doing production?