it's murph at XS Nightclub

Artist Profile

About it's murph

Garrett Murphy — performing as it's murph — came to electronic music from a Nashville, Tennessee origin, where a musical household placed him in piano lessons and a school choir from early childhood. Nashville's context shaped his musical instincts more than his sound: piano lessons built harmonic vocabulary across a decade of practice, and choir built a direct understanding of how vocal performance moves an audience in real time. Those foundations resurface in the emotionally resonant melodic structures that distinguish his house productions — the harmonic transitions in his drops carry a weight that purely percussion-driven tech house sets tend to lack, and the chord progressions in his builds reflect someone who learned music theory from the inside before he touched a production program. His encounter with electronic music arrived through a live performance rather than a streaming discovery: a Porter Robinson concert in high school changed the direction of his musical interest entirely. Robinson's synthesis of melodic grandeur, emotional directness, and electronic production sophistication — his Worlds album demonstrated that electronic music could carry genuine artistic ambition alongside dancefloor engineering — exposed Murphy to a corner of music his Nashville background had not prepared him for. The concert connected sound to feeling in a way that years of piano practice had not achieved: music built through structural architecture rather than lyrical content, that moved bodies through engineered release rather than narrative. He taught himself production software during his sophomore year of high school, working with friends between classes, building tracks that applied electronic techniques to the melodic sensibilities he had absorbed through formal training. DJing house parties and sharing original tracks on social media gave him direct feedback loops that no formal DJ training could replicate: he learned to read how a crowd responds to builds, drops, and transitions through observation rather than theory, developing an intuition for crowd dynamics that later informed his residency programming. After graduation he moved to Los Angeles to study the music industry at the University of Southern California — a professional program covering recording deal structures, publishing mechanics, streaming royalty flows, and booking economics. But the city itself provided the more formative education. Los Angeles's electronic music scene in the early 2020s encompassed the Hollywood nightclub circuit, the Goldenvoice mountain venue formats, and the beach-city festival culture — a full range of contemporary house formats from festival-crossover headliners to underground warehouse programming. Working in that environment while completing his degree compressed what might have taken years of touring into an intensive period of direct market exposure, placing him in rooms where the production infrastructure, the crowd demographics, and the programming decisions differed enough to accelerate his understanding of what different venue formats require from a DJ. His first released track came as a collaboration — a 2022 production with Twin Diplomacy and RSCL that functioned as a calling card without yet establishing an independent sound identity. The proof of his solo voice arrived in February 2023 with 'Food for the Soul,' his debut single as it's murph. The track's trajectory was driven by listener-to-listener sharing rather than press or radio: it entered the top 3 of Spotify's Viral 50 US chart, a real-time measurement of organic sharing behavior, and landed on Spotify editorial playlists including mint, Housewerk, and big on the internet — three of the platform's highest-visibility channels for discovery-oriented electronic music listeners. By mid-2026 the track had accumulated more than 34 million Spotify streams — a figure that, for a debut solo release without major-label marketing infrastructure, represents sustained audience growth through genuine listening engagement rather than manufactured campaign activity. The viral moment established his name within the house music community faster than any club gig circuit could have, reaching listeners in markets he had not yet performed in. His social-native approach to audience development placed him among a generation of house DJs who built followings through TikTok and short-form content before club bookings caught up to their streaming profiles. Murphy used original tracks, production process clips, and DJ set highlights as content that circulated through networks connecting house music listeners independently of traditional media. 'Food for the Soul' reached chart positions through this channel — actual listening engagement rather than promotional positioning — which created an audience profile weighted toward younger listeners familiar with the track before they encountered it in a live context. The catalog expanded from the debut's foundation: 'High and I Like It' featuring Evalyn, 'Youthful Kids,' and '123 Round Again' extended his library across the tonal range his live sets require, from the melodic euphoria of 'Food for the Soul' through the more bass-forward energy of his later productions. Each release developed the catalog depth that hour-long residency DJ sets demand — the ability to move through multiple energy levels within a single performance without switching between fundamentally different sounds. The Wynn Nightlife residency bookings formalized a market position that 'Food for the Soul' had made plausible but had not yet confirmed. He joined the 2025 XS Nightclub and Encore Beach Club roster as a newcomer, his first-year placement putting him on the same booking list as Kaskade, Gryffin, and The Chainsmokers. The 2025 season proved his Wynn debut was not a single-cycle booking: he returned to the 2026 roster as a second-year resident — the multi-year relationship Wynn Nightlife typically reserves for artists who consistently deliver within its specific production environment. Confirmed 2026 summer dates span the peak Las Vegas season: June 12 and July 17 at Encore Beach Club's outdoor pool deck starting at 11:00 AM, July 3 and August 28 at XS Nightclub at 10:30 PM — a programming spread giving Las Vegas visitors multiple access points across different venue formats and summer calendar periods. The distinction between his EBC and XS performances reflects deliberate venue-specific programming. EBC's 5-acre outdoor format runs the full arc of afternoon energy — his pool deck sets move through an extended warm-up sequence as the venue fills across the early afternoon, building to peak impact in the hours before close. XS at 10:30 PM indoors operates on a compressed timeline where the room arrives primed from the previous act, requiring him to peak faster and hold energy at a higher floor throughout. His catalog's tonal range allows calibration to venue context without abandoning the melodic house identity that defines his sound in both formats. Beyond Las Vegas, his 2025 performance schedule included Shambhala Music Festival in British Columbia — an independent festival whose community-oriented programming identity provides a different kind of validation than commercial festival billing. The Through My System Tour established headlining capacity across North American markets as an independent touring act. His Insomniac Music artist relationship connects him to the largest independent electronic music festival promoter in North America, placing his bookings in the festival pipeline alongside the Strip residency that addresses the Las Vegas side of his market. Guest list through NoCoverVegas for it's murph's XS Nightclub and Encore Beach Club appearances provides complimentary entry for qualifying guests. Sources: insomniac.com/music/artists/its-murph/, edmidentity.com/2026/02/05/wynn-nightlife-2026-residency-lineup/, famousbirthdays.com/people/it-s-murph.html, shambhalamusicfestival.com/artists/its-murph