COVER
Sofi Tukker
Keep Moving
By Isi Ijewere
Publishing date: Oct 07, 2026
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We’re backstage at the RBC Amphitheatre on a perfect fall evening, the kind of night designed for an outdoor dance party. The air is cool, the city is still buzzing around the venue, and somewhere behind the walls, a crowd is beginning to gather. Sofi Tukker are preparing to take the stage, bringing their Animal Talk tour to Toronto.
For over a decade, Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern have built a unique world around their music and distinct visual elements. Their music moves between electronic, house, pop, cultural influences and countless other sounds and has become a core part of their story along with a visual universe and live performances. But after years of building that world, Sofi Tukker means much more to the two people behind it. “It means our whole life,” Halpern says. “We’ve been building it since we graduated college, so it means everything.”
More than a decade into their career, Sofi Tukker has evolved into a creative ecosystem that has grown with them. Interestingly, their creative dynamic has not changed as much as one might expect. “I feel like it’s the exact same,” Hawley-Weld says, laughing briefly. They have grown as artists and as people who challenge each other. Not necessarily because they disagree, but because it brings out the best in them. To paint a better picture, an idea from one of them has to survive the other person’s scrutiny. It has to be defended or reconsidered. “If I come up with something and he doesn’t like it, he’s gonna challenge it,” Hawley-Weld explains. And then I have to kind of double down or adjust.” That process, she says, forces them to think about their own biases and assumptions. In a creative partnership that has lasted this long, maybe that willingness to question one another is part of what keeps the music from becoming stagnant.
We’re backstage at the RBC Amphitheatre on a perfect fall evening, the kind of night designed for an outdoor dance party. The air is cool, the city is still buzzing around the venue, and somewhere behind the walls, a crowd is beginning to gather. Sofi Tukker are preparing to take the stage, bringing their Animal Talk tour to Toronto.
For over a decade, Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern have built a unique world around their music and distinct visual elements. Their music moves between electronic, house, pop, cultural influences and countless other sounds and has become a core part of their story along with a visual universe and live performances. But after years of building that world, Sofi Tukker means much more to the two people behind it. “It means our whole life,” Halpern says. “We’ve been building it since we graduated college, so it means everything.”
More than a decade into their career, Sofi Tukker has evolved into a creative ecosystem that has grown with them. Interestingly, their creative dynamic has not changed as much as one might expect. “I feel like it’s the exact same,” Hawley-Weld says, laughing briefly. They have grown as artists and as people who challenge each other. Not necessarily because they disagree, but because it brings out the best in them. To paint a better picture, an idea from one of them has to survive the other person’s scrutiny. It has to be defended or reconsidered. “If I come up with something and he doesn’t like it, he’s gonna challenge it,” Hawley-Weld explains. And then I have to kind of double down or adjust.” That process, she says, forces them to think about their own biases and assumptions. In a creative partnership that has lasted this long, maybe that willingness to question one another is part of what keeps the music from becoming stagnant.
Keep Moving
They’re quite literally a dynamic duo. They’ve perfected their craft and know all the ins and outs of dance music. They know exactly how to get the crowd going, when to turn things up, when to slow down, and all the secrets to a tune that’s impossible to stand still to. Between percussion and groove, the duo explains that a song can be morphed into something impossible to resist. But it’s deeper than that. Tucker explains that you can tell if a song is “robotic” or if there’s a human groove to it. Understanding all these elements can transform a song into something you feel. Sophie adds the word: “percussion.” It’s an important element that alters how a song is received and moves through a room.
Every room has its own energy, and every audience arrives with a different expectation. The duo adjusts accordingly. A Sofi Tukker show at one venue might not resemble a Sofi Tukker show somewhere else, because the environment becomes part of the performance. They think about the crowd, the venue, and the atmosphere they’re walking into. Their approach is much more about understanding where they are than about changing who they are.
They keep adapting and developing their work, even while on tour. They approach each show as something that can still evolve, fine-tuning each performance as they progress with the tour. “Every show, we’re trying to make it better, trying to learn from the last show,” Hawley-Weld says.
At the end of the current tour, they plan to return to the studio. They have music already in progress, ideas that are developing and songs that now need time to be worked on and brought to life. “We’ve got a lot of music that we’ve been working on that we just need some time to get into the studio and kind of fine-tune,” Hawley-Weld says.
So the process begins again. They’ll create, challenge each other’s ideas, and eventually find something that belongs to both of them. Then, the music will leave the studio, find its way to headphones and speakers across the world, then to another crowd, another city, and the cycle continues.
Photographer: Danica Robinson
