Electronic music too often revolves around its overblown payoff, forgoing anything of musical interest in favor of pretty light shows and endless teasing of the inevitable bass drop that never fails to thrill ecstasy-fueled audiences.

It’s easy to demonize the new trend of turntables and other electronic instrumentation—just as guitar distortion and synthesizers were demonized when they were new—but that’s ignoring the endless sonic possibilities of electronic music beyond the assaultive, repetitive tendencies of many EDM artists. There are countless artists who use electronic music to create original, compelling melodies that have merits far beyond simply being danceable—you just have to know where to start.

DJ Shadow

DJ Shadow all but founded the trend of creating original music from scraps of old recordings, founding and arguably perfecting a new genre with his landmark debut album Endtroducing… The genre is often called “trip hop,” an apt descriptor of Shadow’s instrumental hip-hop music paired with just enough experimental and jazz influences to really, well, trip you out. Later albums have showed that his talents as a producer and curator of vocal and musical samples from little-known sources extend far beyond hip-hop, enabling him to create dynamic songs within just about every genre.

Flying Lotus

The Brainfeeder record label is responsible for some of Los Angeles’ most intriguing electro-tinged recordings, and producer Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, is at the center of the label’s success. Stripped of his many frequent collaborators, Ellison makes soul-infused hip-hop beats that are free to evolve in unexpected directions thanks to the usual absence of lyrics. Harps and other stringed instruments are equally important as synthesizers in his experimental music, which feels at once like a summation of a dozen-plus musical genres (soul, acid jazz, hip-hop and funk, to name a few) and like something completely new.

Nicolas Jaar

Chilean American producer Nicolas Jaar has no shortage of creative ideas, both in the club and on record. He’s demonstrated his considerable skills with turntables using a show called From Scratch wherein he creates live music from vinyl he purchased the same day, but his original music is even more exciting, abandoning club friendly sounds in favor of eerie melancholy. His debut album Space Is Only Noise is especially fascinating—a downtempo triumph of mysterious sounds and intriguing groovy melodies that blend everything from African jazz to old-school hip-hop.

Caribou

Amusingly but accurately labeled as IDM, or intelligent dance music, Caribou creates infectious polyrhythmic dance beats with easily accessible original choruses that often repeat and repeat ad infinitum until their songs end. The repetition isn’t so much a crutch as it is a tool, allowing the band members to thrillingly explore every possible variation on a dynamic theme, operating in the same jamming creative vein as their kraut rock forbearers like Can and Kraftwerk.

Balam Acab

Balam Acab is about as far from the obnoxious excesses of EDM as you can get without turning to room noise. Ambient but never boring, the songs feel like products of the natural world, incorporating unintelligible vocal melodies and nature recordings into striking post-rock reveries. This is prime headphone music, loaded with immersive aesthetic detail like rustling leaves, sloshing water and tinkling keyboards that seems to transport listeners to gorgeous exotic locales in five-minute increments.

Tycho

San Francisco producer Scott Hansen found a sound so well-defined and aurally pleasing for his project Tycho, it’s a wonder no one has quite mastered it before. The production is crisp, resonant and spare, creating songs that feel far more organic than virtually any other electronic artists. Analog synths and live guitars swirl around each other in progressive, gradually evolving jams that convey a lot of emotion without any lyrics to speak of.

Phantogram

Moody nighttime romance pervades the songs of Phantogram, an electro-psych duo producing spacey soundscapes and irresistible melodies. Their first two albums, Eyelid Movies and Voices, manage a seamless blend of electric guitar and textural synths with enough emotion behind singer Sarah Barthel’s vocals to involve casual listeners, and the band’s talents for crafting a great hook have been put to good use on a recent EP collaboration with rapper Big Boi called Big Grams.

M83

Like many EDM artists, French electronic band M83 creates music that is unapologetically overblown. Unlike many EDM artists, the band relies on a blend of real and electronic instrumentation to create conventional songs rich in pop melodies and soaked in dreamy atmosphere, creating evocative instrumental tracks in between soaring electronica epics like “Go!” or “Midnight City” that rely on arena-worthy guitar or sax solos rather than excessive bass for their climaxes