Dance music, dark matter, direct message, dungeon master, distant memory—people have tried to decipher the meaning behind the name Rare DM, but really it’s the Brooklyn-based singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Erin Hoagg.

Rare DM is Hoagg at her most vulnerable and visceral, as she mines dates, breakups and other adventures to make revealing, romantic darkwave dance-pop music.

With a collection of vintage analog synths, Hoagg transforms the mundane into the magical, transposing real DMs she’s sent and received into songs that reflect on the fractured nature of modern communication and online dating. Her songs are dark and deeply intimate, rendering in raw detail the search for that special connection we all crave, but rarely find.

Rare DM lives up to its name in live performance by utilizing a DAW-less setup. This replaces the now-familiar image of someone standing behind a laptop with the striking spectacle of Hoagg dancing between an Octatrack, a Machinedrum and other analog gear. See Rare DM live at SXSW, Verboden Festival, and Coldwaves X Festival in 2022.