ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Harrison Patrick Smith has a look - black suit, white shirt, skinny tie, sunglasses. When he puts it on, he becomes The Dare.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOOD TIME")
THE DARE: (Singing) Oh, let's have some fun tonight. Oh, let's have some fun tonight.
SHAPIRO: The Dare is his solo music project. He's the singer and producer, and he makes a type of raunchy party music that draws comparisons to LCD Soundsystem, The Strokes, Justice and other such artists of the early 2000s. Smith's debut album as The Dare is out now, and NPR's Kai McNamee went to see him perform.
KAI MCNAMEE, BYLINE: For Katherine Noble, the appeal of The Dare is simple - the music, the look, the whole vibe. It's just fun.
KATHERINE NOBLE: And I feel like he just sort of, like, acts, this is like the, you know what? I want to go out. I want to party. I want to have fun. I want to be a little evil with it (laughter).
MCNAMEE: Noble and her friend Madison Jarvis made a two-hour drive for this Wednesday night show in Washington, D.C. They're both 23 years old, but Jarvis says the music reminds her of a bygone era.
MADISON JARVIS: This is, like, how I imagined music sounding when I was younger. And so now that I get to go out and party to it, I'm like, OK, yeah, that's what's up.
MCNAMEE: Is there a song that you're, like, dying to hear?
JARVIS: I like "Perfume" a lot.
MCNAMEE: How does "Perfume" go?
KATHERINE NOBLE AND MADISON JARVIS: (Singing) That's my perfume. It's 5.99.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PERFUME")
THE DARE: (Singing) I spray it in my mouth, and the taste is divine. It's erotic.
MCNAMEE: For Harrison Patrick Smith, playing to a crowd screaming his lyrics is a relatively new experience.
HARRISON PATRICK SMITH: Because for a long time, I've been playing shows without having much music released.
MCNAMEE: He's played music most of his life, starting when his parents put a violin in his hands at age 4. He's been in various bands and released his own music under the name Turtlenecked, but it wasn't until summer 2022 that Smith went absolutely viral.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIRLS")
THE DARE: (Singing) I like the girls that do drugs, girls with cigarettes in the back of the club, girls that hate cops and buy guns.
MCNAMEE: When the single "Girls" launched Smith to internet stardom, he was still working as a substitute teacher in New York. Then this summer Smith's fame only snowballed when he produced "Guess" with Charli XCX.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GUESS")
CHARLI XCX: (Singing) You want to guess the color of my underwear. You want you want to know what I got going on down there.
SMITH: "Guess," for example, I think sounds like Mr. Oizo at times, to me. Like...
MCNAMEE: Smith's music pulls from a wide range of influences across genres.
SMITH: DJ Mehdi, The Rapture and Chicks on Speed. Or there's Felix da Housecat and...
ROMIL HEMNANI: He kind of has, like, an encyclopedic knowledge on music - like, everything from, like, the '50s and '60s till now.
MCNAMEE: Producer Romil Hemnani worked with Smith on the song "Elevation."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ELEVATION")
THE DARE: (Singing) I think my teeth are falling out, like in a dream of mine.
HEMNANI: When he came to the studio and he just, like, started picking up every instrument and shredding, I was like, damn. People don't know, like, you're kind of a machine. Like, you'll write the song. You'll record it. You'll produce it. You'll play all the instruments.
MCNAMEE: The music is often compared to dance punk bands from New York 20 or so years ago like The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem.
(SOUNDBITE OF LCD SOUNDSYSTEM SONG, "DAFT PUNK IS PLAYING AT MY HOUSE")
MCNAMEE: Smith is 28 years old and wasn't actually around for that time, but his signature outfit does hearken back to that era, and he does say he's inspired by it.
SMITH: It just felt raw and, like, cool and sexy and a little bit unattainable. But I think, like, people want - they're missing a little bit of that feeling right now.
JUSTINE DELANEY: It was a loud, dirty, incredible, magical experience.
MCNAMEE: Justine D, full name Justine Delaney, was a major DJ in 2000s New York nightlife. She says that before social media and smartphones, people really did party harder, without fear of anything being recorded.
DELANEY: People were just, I think for lack of a better term, going a little nuts. And that's from sexual experimentation, experimentation with your fashion sense.
MCNAMEE: Smith thinks that one of the reasons his music is taking off right now is that after COVID isolation, people miss going nuts. He says he's exhausted by the internet and social media.
SMITH: That's part of the whole thesis of The Dare. I just think people should get out more and go dancing more and make music with other people in real life more.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU'RE INVITED")
THE DARE: (Singing) You're invited to my party.
MCNAMEE: At its heart, he says The Dare is an invitation for people to express their pent-up energy and get out of the house. Kai McNamee, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU'RE INVITED")
THE DARE: (Singing) You're still invited. You're invited. You're invited. You're invited. You're invited. You're invited. You're invited. You're invited. You're invited. (Vocalizing). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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