In a world where the relentless grip of social media piles absurd pressure on DJs, Hard Being Hot is a blissfully WiFi-free sanctuary. Like a chance encounter that was somehow always meant to be, four kindred spirits found each other in Brussels’ unique melting pot. Lithuanian EMILIJA, Belgian Stanislawa, Italian Vera Moro, and French NMSS make up the ultimate Gen Z DJ quattro: subversive, sharp-witted, unapologetically headstrong, and acutely aware of the social and political currents shaping their world. That doesn’t stop them from challenging the status quo—while having an absolutely reckless amount of fun.

That much was clear when we sat down with them at the intimate, baroque-styled hideaway Jalousy in the heart of Brussels—a late-night refuge where knowing the password is your ticket in.

Why are we here, at Jalousy?

Stanislawa: First off, I had easy access to the space—I’ve been hosting my Drift Club parties here on Sunday nights since September 2024. But more than that, I’ve always felt welcome to experiment here, to break away from expectations. And with Hard Being Hot, that’s exactly the kind of energy we’re going for.

NMSS: It’s a bit of a tongue-in-cheek space, with all the over-the-top baroque flair—honestly, it fits Hard Being Hot’s ironic vibe perfectly.

When was Hard Being Hot born?

EMILIJA: We were at a dinner party at a friend’s place, all together, when the idea sparked. At the time, NMSS had a Kiosk residency, and we started fantasising about doing a four-way B2B. The rest of the night was spent brainstorming names—until, at some point, someone started complaining about getting too many nudes or unsolicited explicit pics. I just blurted out, “Oh, it must be so hard being hot.” And that was it.

Is Hard Being Hot a blend of all your individual DJ styles, or do you have an agreement on what kind of music will be played?

EMILIJA: A bit of both. True to the name, we all instinctively knew we wanted to play hard and hot music—but what that actually means is wide open. We all come from different corners, weaving together trance, Latin core, hard house, techno, or whatever feels right in the moment. It just clicked and took on a life of its own. Hard Being Hot became like a filter on our USBs—not just any track makes the cut, right?

Vera Moro: The whole idea was to not take it too seriously. In our solo careers, we’re all pushing to bring the best of ourselves, carving out an identity, earning respect from the crowd. But with Hard Being Hot, it’s all about pure fun—no overthinking, no crate-digging flexes. It’s not about, “Oh my God, this is that ultra-rare 1999 track I’ve been hunting on Discogs for years.” No, the vibe is simple: play, have fun, laugh, and just dance.

EMILIJA: But it’s not entirely random—we take not being serious very seriously. Every moment matters, just in a way that’s pure hedonistic fun.

NMSS: I think it’s also a refreshing break from our solo careers—every now and then, it’s nice to just come together and keep things loose.

Vera Moro: What’s beautiful is that our sheer exuberance spills straight onto the dance floor. Take Dour Festival, for example—when we played the intimate Rocamadour stage, the vibe was immaculate. Smiling faces everywhere, and quite literally, not a single person standing still.

It must be intense behind the DJ booth, being four people?

Vera Moro: For our first Kiosk show, we introduced the idea of a ‘disrespectful B2B’—a playful, chaos-fuelled concept where we’d slam in a new track every 30 seconds, relentlessly cutting across each other’s selections with zero regard for continuity. Pure, unfiltered mayhem.

When there aren’t four Pioneer CDJs at our disposal, we’re stuck constantly swapping USBs and SD cards—basically a one-way ticket to chaos.

Is Hard Being Hot also a bit of a critique of DJ culture taking itself too seriously?

EMILIJA: For sure, yeah. It’s even a little parody of how we act in our own solo careers. With Hard Being Hot, we just throw everything out the window—everything’s a joke, but like, a serious joke. It’s all a magnified, exaggerated version of exactly what you’re not supposed to do as a DJ. Like playing that Justin Bieber donk edit that no one else has. 

Do all the venues or festivals that book you, are aware of this?

NMSS: I think they do. They know the kind of high-energy sets we bring—and honestly, they want a bit of chaos in the programming.

Am I right to conclude that you are part of a generation that has cancelled all of the rules?

NMSS: Definitely. I feel like, post-COVID, we’ve entered a post-genre era—if not entirely beyond genres, then at least blurring their boundaries more than ever. And that really reflects what we do, and what so many others are doing as well. I’m loving how techno is colliding with Brazilian funk, how pop edits are taking over club sets—it’s all becoming this wild, genre-fluid playground. 

EMILIJA: Also, it’s about embracing maximalism without feeling like it has to be critiqued. For so long, especially in electronic music, women and other minorities have been expected to fit into this specific box—wear the oversized slouchy T-shirt, stay in the corner, don’t stand out, and just play the same safe selections as everyone else. But we don’t subscribe to that. We can do whatever we want, wear whatever we want, and play literally anything we want.

Vera Moro: There are plenty of DJs who stick to one genre and really dive deep into it—and that’s totally fine. One approach doesn’t cancel out the other; they complement each other. 

NMSS: It’s just that, at some point, that approach became the standard—like the only way to do it. But clearly, that’s not the case anymore. Now, there’s way more room for everyone to express themselves however they want.

Was a new era with sufficient catharsis needed after the Covid pandemic? 

Stanislawa: Of course, it was clear that after being stuck inside our houses for such a long time, people didn’t need minimalistic music.  

NMSS: As we slowly slip into a darker political era—with fascism not just creeping in but already through the door—you can feel it reflected in the music. It’s hard to put into words, but there’s this unspoken energy, especially for minorities, that seeps into the sound. It’s like, whenever the times get harder, the music does too.

EMILIJA: And hotter! 

(general laughter)

Where do you go looking to discover new music?

NMSS: TikTok! 

(more laughter)

EMILIJA: For me, it’s mostly just SoundCloud. That’s where all the real gems are—the edits, the obscure unreleased stuff, some random 16-year-old in their bedroom crafting a hyperpop flip of… who even knows what. 

Vera Moro: I’m a Bandcamp girl. 

Stanislawa: Honestly, I don’t like digging on Bandcamp, it’s not intuitive at all. I just scroll through YouTube, click around, and see where it takes me.

EMILIJA: I love YouTube as well. Sometimes you find this one random page where a 56 year old man is just digitizing his entire library. For the 1990s trance and hard techno for instance, it’s pure gold.

Vera Moro: And sometimes… TikTok. No, seriously—it’s happened.

EMILIJA: Also, just going to parties. I’m not against Shazamming a track if you love it. That’s the whole point, right? The music is out there, so why not? And who are we to gatekeep a tune that someone else made? At the end of the day, it’s all about sharing.

We live in such a visual world now that sometimes it feels like if it’s not on social media, it almost doesn’t exist. Does that ever feel like pressure to you?

Vera Moro: Yes, a lot. And honestly, it’s a full-time job. It goes way beyond 38 hours a week—it’s constant. And the worst part? It just feeds into the deeper addiction we all already have to social media.

EMILIJA: I’ve lived on the internet for as long as I can remember. Since I was 10—Tumblr, blogs, … all of it. So this has been my world forever. But I think now, for the first time, I’m really starting to see the negative effects of it.

I was always fine with posting—I never really felt the pressure. But then you start seeing how people perceive you in real life, the expectations they build just from the images you’ve put out there. It’s weird because, in a way, I created that narrative myself. But now, I’m almost a victim of it, because I can’t always be that version of me. Like, sometimes I’m just walking down the street, and people expect me to be all done up, looking hot, super fun, bouncing around. And I’m like… I can’t always show up as that person.

Vera Moro: And then there’s the pressure of followers—keeping up engagement, staying relevant. Because if you start losing followers, you start losing bookings. And that’s the brutal reality of it. And then there is the comparison game. 

EMILIJA: The comparison game is a huge part of it—it’s literally evil. You start looking at other DJs, everything happening for them, and suddenly you’re overanalyzing everything. Like, “Oh my God, they posted this—does that mean I should do the same?” When in reality, so much of it is arbitrary. It’s just the algorithm doing its thing.

Vera Moro: And then there’s the whole gig video thing. You have to post them, but only the good ones, from the right places. Sometimes, the party itself was actually shit, but the video looks cool because the crowd was packed. So, online, it seems like an amazing night—even when it really wasn’t. And maybe you had the best time playing for 20 people but you can’t post about it because it doesn’t look good on video.

Stanislawa: It's a performance rather than actually living the experience itself.

Do you dream of an alternative?

NMSS: There’s nothing like that now—I can’t even imagine it.

Stanislawa: I mean, I fantasise about back in the day, how it must have been. The 1990s, early 2000s—no social media, just flyering, doing it purely for the music. It all seems so raw and real. But then, when you look closer, it wasn’t all perfect. The line-ups back then? Often a total parody—representation was seriously lacking. So yeah, as much as social media sucks, it’s also what’s allowed us to exist in this space in the first place.

EMILIJA: There’s a whole shift happening—people are slowly migrating elsewhere because, let’s be real, everyone hates Meta and Instagram. It’s probably the most toxic place to exist. But then we ask ourselves—what would actually happen to artists if it all disappeared? Not all of us would have the same reach or audience. We dream about a scene where DJs aren’t social media idols or role models anymore. But the reality is… would any of us even have these opportunities without it?

NMSS: We need to look at the bigger picture—the real pressure isn’t just social media itself, it’s productivity. Social media is just a reflection of that. Artists are now expected to constantly produce—new press photos every three months, new music every six, interviews every fucking week. On top of that, you have to network, be seen with the right people, maintain these so-called “friendships” that are really just work relationships. And because of that, the things we used to do intuitively—whether it was creating a virtual persona, exaggerating an aesthetic, or even building a political discourse—start feeling forced. Like Stanislawa said, we live in a performance society, and honestly, that’s the smartest way to put it. Social media isn’t the problem—it’s just part of the bigger machine. The real issue is that artists are expected to exist publicly at all times, to constantly be something, to always have something interesting to offer. It’s exhausting.

EMILIJA: At this point, it’s just part of the job. It’s like going into accounting and finance—if you hate Excel spreadsheets, then maybe that career isn’t for you. Same with DJing now—social media is so deeply embedded in it that, unfortunately, if you don’t want to engage with that side of things, maybe this just isn’t the job for you.

You can’t be a DJ without social media?

NMSS: Some DJs still make it without.

Vera Moro: Apart from Helena Hauff, I don’t know many examples. 

NMSS: I think it’s possible, but it’s a much slower and harder path.

It feels like Hard Being Hot doesn’t really have a big social media strategy behind it, would you say it’s also a bit of a safe space in that sense? Like, even though you are on Instagram, it’s a space where you don’t have to follow all the usual rules?

NMSS: Hard Being Hot is such a fun space for us to experiment—we don’t force anything, we just let it flow.

EMILIJA: It doesn’t really have a set aesthetic of its own. Maybe in terms of messaging—yeah, it’s all eggplant emojis, every possible pun about being sexy. But beyond that? No, there’s no grand master plan behind it.

You are four different nationalities, all living in Belgium’s capital. Has Belgium and its electronic music history influenced you in any way?

Stanislawa: Trance music—especially the '90s, the golden era. I think everyone knows at least a bit about it and can be influenced by it in some way.

EMILIJA: Musically, aside from trance—because, yeah, that’s undeniably a Belgian landmark—I wouldn’t say our sound is heavily influenced by what’s traditionally played here. If anything, it’s kind of the opposite. Brussels has always had this strong legacy of serious techno and serious trance, and we just come in with the kitschy, chaotic flip side of it. It’s almost like a playful rebellion against that established sound.

Could Hard Being Hot have happened in Strasbourg or Italy?

Vera Moro: It wouldn’t have been the same anywhere else—Brussels just offers so many more opportunities to actually exist as an artist. That’s why most of us are here, I guess. I can see such a huge difference compared to Italy—it’s so obvious. In Italy, there’s just not much happening because the conditions don’t really allow it. There’s no real infrastructure to support new scenes. But here, it’s different. You’ve got places like Kiosk, a vibrant yet tight-knit electronic scene that’s super accessible. It’s relatively easy—or at least easier—to get gigs, start a career, meet people, form collectives. There’s this organic flow that really allows things to happen.

Stanislawa: No one’s really from here. I mean, I’m from Belgium, but not from Brussels. In some cities, especially in other countries, there’s this strong local scene—like a core community of people who were born there, who’ve always been there. And sometimes, that can make it harder for outsiders to break in. But in Brussels, it’s different. Almost no one can truly say they’re from here, with generations of family rooted in the city. That creates this openness—anyone can come in, make it their own, and shape the scene in their own way.

Who would you book for a club night, and where would it be? 

Vera Moro: Miss Bashful has to be on the lineup—she has a track called Hard Being Hot, which we randomly discovered on the day of our first Kiosk show. Naturally, we had to play it as the closing track.

EMILIJA: Skrillex?

Vera Moro: João Lagrima De Ouro, definitely. 

EMILIJA: Back to back with CRRDR, of course.

Vera Moro: More girlies, definitely. The whole energy is so girl —we need to double down on that.

EMILIJA: DJ G2G. 

Vera Moro: Shygirl

Stanislawa: In a showcase with VTSS.

EMILIJA: Basically, all the hot people who don’t take themselves too seriously—but still have excellent technical skills and real respect in the industry. Actually, it’s the chronically online scene. To really get the references, to understand the tracks we play, you have to be deep in the memes, the culture, the 2010s Disney Channel lore. Bieber fever. The whole thing. Oh, and Pitbull. We need a special Pitbull showcase. No, seriously—can we make this happen?

And where should your festival be?

NMSS: Some amusement park, like Walibi.

Vera Moro: Right in the middle of Grand Place.

Stanislawa: Stadion Baudouin—and absolutely destroy it.

EMILIJA: A cruise ship.

Seems totally doable! Thanks for the chat—and for standing up for the rights of all hot people everywhere. 🔥✨