2022 is shaping up to be a breakthrough year for DJ Cole Knight. A sure-fire marker that she's an artist on the rise, her bookings this year include her first Coachella, Art of the Wild Las Vegas, WECANDANCE festival in Belgium and Diplo’s Higher Ground event series. Having recently been making her mark playing shows across the US and Tulum where she saw out the pandemic, Cole Knight has been on a journey of self-discovery, and she's finding herself on the dance floor. Knight grew up in a small rural town about three hours south of Chicago, in a household where music almost never played. But despite this, she was drawn to music anyway, always seeking it out; clamouring to use iTunes whenever she could and making mix CDs for her friends. Besides a brief stint learning piano and a longer, more dedicated stint learning guitar, Knight's exposure to music up until leaving high school was minimal. It all changed with an instrumental trip to Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, where she danced, connected with people in the industry and, in her own words, "discovered a new world." After school, Knight went to study computer sciences at Michigan State University, where she ran cross country and track for the college team. Racking up a whopping 70 miles per week, running was her world and there was little time for music. That is, until a serious accident on a cross-trainer left her with dislocated ribs. And, she says, a fractured identity. As an antidote for her pain, a friend suggested Knight give yoga a try, and it was during a yoga practice that she fell in love with the emotive, soaring electronics of artists like ODESZA, Jon Hopkins and Gesaffelstein. In another life shift, Knight put her studies on hold for a while to travel around Europe on modelling assignments, taking time to dive into the culture and music in cities like London, Milan and Paris, and exploring the streets with Mura Masa and J Dilla records for company. Sometime later, while going through some personal struggles, Knight downloaded Rekordbox and started experimenting with DJing. In that challenging period of her life, music became Knight's greatest therapy. "It doesn't matter what you have going on," she says. Music will never turn against you." Knight later went back to school to finish her studies. She played a few sets in the bars on campus and started going to warehouse parties in Detroit, before moving to Los Angeles once she'd graduated. After initially feeling intimidated by the scene there, she slowly made more connections by sending her mixes out to promoters, and gradually started picking up more gigs at warehouse parties, after hours events and even soundtracking yoga classes. She also spent time studying Cymatics, leading sound meditations and becoming more and more in tune with her body and the sounds that work for her. As the Covid-19 pandemic took its hold, Knight moved to Tulum, one of the only places where the music was still playing and the dancers were still dancing. Seeing artists like Ariel Vromen, Solomun and Peggy Gou play on the beach, and in the jungle, tapped Knight into a sound and a vibe she hadn't experienced before. It spoke to her soul, she says. She knew that this was the music she was meant to play. In the time since, Knight has been honing her craft and defining her sound—deep, grooving house, hypnotic rhythms, atmospheric synths, trippy textures and the occasional catchy vocal or classic dance tune thrown in. Cole Knight's smart, melodic selections have now seen her invited to share a bill with the likes of Diplo and DJ Tennis in Las Vegas, Damian Lazarus and Swedish House Mafia at a Coachella after party for Spotify and warming up for Black Coffee at Zamna in Tulum. She's also been lighting up the dance floor at Sound, one of LA's best clubs. This summer, she'll relocate to Europe for the season, spending her downtime in the studio and playing shows in Ibiza, at WECANDANCE, Voodoo Village Belgium and Burning Man. As Knight looks forward into the rest of 2022 and beyond, she hopes to see the industry becoming increasingly more welcoming for women. In her role in the scene, she intends to play her part in bringing those historical barriers down. And in her first forays into production, Knight is allowing her intricate understanding of sound and her experience behind the decks to inform her own blossoming style. "I want to put my flavour into the world," she says. "It's going to be a reflection of me, the places I travel to and the experiences I have with the people I meet. It's going to be groovy, that’s for sure."