Two Friends at XS Nightclub

Artist Profile

About Two Friends

Two Friends is the Los Angeles-based DJ and producer duo of Eli Sones and Matthew Halper, who met in seventh grade while attending Brentwood School in West Los Angeles and formed the project together at the end of their senior year of high school — coming up with the name during a Senior Seminar class they both enrolled in. Sones was raised in Los Angeles; Halper relocated to the city around age ten. Their friendship predated their musical collaboration by years, which means the creative shorthand they developed before releasing a single track together is one of the foundational advantages of their partnership — the kind of communication that most musical duos spend years building from scratch. After graduating, they separated geographically for college: Sones enrolled at Vanderbilt University in Nashville to study Human and Organizational Development, while Halper went to Stanford in Palo Alto to study Product Design. Despite being in different cities, they continued building the Two Friends project remotely throughout their undergraduate years, releasing music and growing an online audience. Their commercial breakthrough came in 2014 when Sirius XM's BPM channel added their remix of Lana Del Rey's Born to Die to regular rotation while both were still undergraduates — a signal that their pop-literate, genre-agnostic approach was connecting with audiences well beyond their personal networks. They graduated and returned to Los Angeles in 2015 to work the project full-time, and have not looked back since. The Big Bootie Mix series is their signature output and the primary vehicle through which their fanbase has grown into one of the most devoted in electronic music. Each volume is an hour-long continuous DJ mix that blends 200 or more tracks across pop, hip-hop, R&B, EDM, and dance music — sampling, chopping, and rearranging source material into a seamless medley that rewards listeners who know the original tracks while functioning as pure dancefloor energy for those who don't. The series launched in 2012, has grown to 27 volumes as of 2026, and has become one of the most downloaded free DJ mix series in the world. Earlier volumes accumulated millions of streams across SoundCloud and other platforms where they release the mixes at no charge. Beyond the Lana Del Rey remix, viral edits of The Killers' Mr. Brightside and Blink-182's I Miss You contributed to a growing online reputation built around encyclopedic pop culture knowledge and technical blending skill — the same combination that powers every Big Bootie volume. Big Bootie Land, the touring festival concept they developed around the mix series, translates the Big Bootie experience from headphones to outdoor festival scale. The format sells out venues across the United States and Canada, drawing audiences that span age groups and musical backgrounds in a way that few touring electronic acts manage — because the source material in a Big Bootie set covers enough eras and genres to find every crowd member's entry point somewhere in the sequence. Big Bootie Mix Volume 27 is set to premiere at their Chicago Big Bootie Land event at Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island on May 16, 2026, following the pattern of previous volumes debuting at major tour stops before wider online release. Additional 2026 Big Bootie Land dates include Philadelphia on May 30 and Toronto on July 5. Their Las Vegas residency at Wynn Nightlife began in January 2023 at XS Nightclub and Encore Beach Club, placing them within the same roster of Wynn resident DJs that includes headliners who have defined different eras of the Strip's electronic music programming. The Big Bootie format translates particularly well to the Las Vegas nightclub context: the crowd at XS and Encore Beach Club spans the demographics that a broad-format pop and dance mix naturally addresses, and the mix's energy-first, genre-agnostic approach aligns with the open-format expectations of a room where not every guest arrived specifically for a niche electronic music show. They continue their residency through 2026, with XS and Encore Beach Club appearances scheduled throughout the summer season. Their 2025 Heatwave Tour demonstrated the consistent national demand for the Big Bootie format across multiple market sizes — a touring infrastructure that feeds directly into the Las Vegas residency by bringing their audience into the orbit of a market where many guests are visiting from out of state and looking for nightlife they already know. Guest list through NoCoverVegas for Two Friends at XS Nightclub and Encore Beach Club provides free entry for qualifying guests, with advance registration recommended for weekend dates and summer season events. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Friends_(DJs), electronic.vegas/artist/two-friends/, bandsintown.com/a/11530166-two-friends