From Marseille to Paris, KHELI has been shaping a singular path within the French techno landscape. Over the past five years, her work has evolved through contrast where techno balances rawness with sensitivity, guided by the immediacy of the moment rather than allegiance to format or trend.
Her emergence has been gradual and deliberate, built on consistency and authentic presence. Intimate Home Sessions shared online revealed a practice grounded in listening and restraint, while appearances on platforms such as Rinse France and HÖR Berlin placed her within a broader international dialogue. A background in fashion continues to inform both her artistic and digital identity: one that feels fast-forward yet rooted in nostalgia. Instagram posts- laptop screenshots, playlists, handwritten notes- mirror the way her music is constructed. From this position, her sound invites closer attention, making KHELI our Deep Tech Mag New Talent of the Month.
CONDITIONED THROUGH SOUND
Growing up in France, near the Luxembourg and German borders, KHELI’s sonic memory is not structured around records or scenes, but around sound as an environment. Radios left running, televisions filling silence, footsteps muffled by carpet, the clock radio marking time. She recalls these impressions with precision: a purple iPod Shuffle looping Lady Gaga’s The Fame, the smell of cigarettes in a car, piano lessons, late-night television noise, and cousins gathered at her grandmother’s house. That unfiltered mode of attention defines her relationship to music: it is not a calling or an escape, yet a conditioned way of life. That early exposure shaped the way she listens today with sets reflecting this sensibility. Listening to her flow, she manages to carefully read environments and adapt accordingly to translate the present moment through sound. She moves with speed and decisiveness, intuitively raw, yet never careless.
“I like being on the dance floor as much as I like being the decks, and I think this is something very important to understand if you wanna be a DJ. You have to understand how the dance floor works and evolves.”
UNDERGROUND PROTECTION
KHELI’s approach to techno is inseparable from her personal history. Self-taught as a DJ and producer, she did not come through an institution or a clearly delineated scene. Raised across overlapping cultural environments, she learned early that freedom only functions when it is anchored by structure. While her influences stretch across rap, electro, and club music more broadly, techno remains the axis around which everything rotates.
The underground music landscape is to her not defined by scale or visibility, but by autonomy. She explains:
“Underground does not mean small or unknown, it means independent, radical, and faithful to a vision”
And so underground culture exists in opposition to standardisation. A culture that survives in smaller rooms, in physical proximity, in environments where sound is not consumed passively but negotiated collectively, where there is heat, sweat, and bodies breathing together. These are spaces where techno still functions as a social practice rather than a product. For KHELI, music only makes sense when it remains open to change.
This conviction underpins her resistance to formulaic techno. As the scene expands and fragments, KHELI remains wary of closed systems and fixed aesthetics. What draws her is contrast and hybridity: the tension generated when influences collide rather than resolve. Techno, in her view, should remain unfinished. A site of exploration rather than resolution. What needs protection is not a sound, but the conditions that allow risk to exist.
TRENDLESS FASHION
Authenticity, in this context, becomes less about image and more about responsibility. KHELI describes it as alignment between thought, feeling, and action. These dimensions have long structured her life, well before stepping into the booth. Prior to committing fully to music, she moved through other creative disciplines. She studied architecture for six years while nurturing a private ambition to work in fashion, drawn to runway shows, scenography, and spatial construction. Fashion taught her discipline, structure, and how to build an identity through expression. Music, in contrast, allowed her to disrupt structure and set it in motion. Today, both worlds coexist organically in how she presents herself, constructs sets, and thinks about narrative.
On stage, authenticity means presence rather than performance. She dresses according to her internal state, as if her appearance reflects an inner climate. Off stage, it means articulating her position clearly, particularly as a woman navigating a scene that still struggles with power, representation, and voice. KHELI addresses these realities openly, sharing weekly reflections through written texts on Instagram that touch on mental health, backstage dynamics, and care within an increasingly expansive scene.
“Fashion sharpened my sense of detail; music gave it emotion. Today, they coexist naturally in how I present myself, how I construct sets, and how I think about storytelling.”
KHELI’S MIND
Looking ahead, her ambitions extend beyond individual trajectory. Emotionally, she seeks to create moments of heightened awareness: experiences that interrupt routine and restore presence. Culturally, she believes electronic music still carries an educational function, capable of transmitting values that shaped her own relationship with techno: respect, curiosity, and collective engagement. Politically, techno’s history already speaks. Where some attempt to neutralise that legacy, she argues for its amplification. As the scene grows, the protection and transmission of its values becomes, in her view, increasingly urgent.
If her USB were to be named, she says it would be called ‘Kheli’s Mind’. Less a joke than a declaration — a reminder that behind the sound lies a continuous process of thinking, listening, and adjustment, and a refusal to let techno become anything less than what it has always been.
Discover more about KHELI
📷 : Cover Photo Credits / Courtesy of KHELI & Erwan Blaszka
📷 : Additional Photo Credits / Courtesy of KHELI, Erwan Blaszka, Marou Larusse, Malayoux, Odo, Louison Brmd, Insolent Rave, Chloe Rose, François Burckel
💚: Special thanks to @kheli.kheli.kheli and Laureline from @haventalents