musclecars

Brooklyn duo Musclecars fuse R&B, disco, and house into fresh territory while evoking the communal ethos and timeless textures of classic dance music, drawing listeners from neighborhood crowds to global audiences. New York natives Brandon Weems and Craig Handfield first connected in 2009 through an online forum for sneaker enthusiasts before sharing a festival experience that cemented their bond. Although steeped in contemporary R&B and hip-hop during their formative years, the pair later immersed themselves in the city’s dance-music lineage, tracing it from Masters at Work through Todd Terry.

In 2018 they channeled that passion into Coloring Lessons, a Brooklyn residency designed to revive house music’s vintage communal spirit and its deep roots within Black musical traditions amid an era of fleeting focus. The event also gave rise to a namesake label overseen by Weems and Handfield. Under the Musclecars moniker, the duo issued their debut output in 2020: the single “Don’t Go,” featuring vocalist Brandon Markell Holmes, alongside the EP Street Dreams, whose studio use of live instrumentation yielded an earthy dance aesthetic. Holmes returned for the title track of their 2021 EP Shelter.

The duo advanced further in 2024 with the expansive album Sugar Honey Iced Tea! on the U.K. label BBE; a companion remix collection, Double Honey Pack, extended house’s historical threads through reworkings by Louie Vega of Masters at Work and Maurice Fulton.