W&W

W&W are a Dutch DJ and production duo composed of Willem van Hanegem Jr. (born 25 June 1987 in Breda) and Wardt van der Harst (born 26 December 1988 in Dongen). They first connected via Windows Live Messenger to swap unfinished productions, met in person at Trance Energy 2007 in the Netherlands, and began producing together shortly after — the 2008 single "Mustang" was their first international breakthrough and set the template for the festival-uplifting register that defined their early catalogue. The 2012-2013 stretch was the duo's pivot point. They founded Mainstage Music as an Armada sub-label in April 2012 and used it to publish singles "The Code" (2013), "Thunder" (2013), and the catalogue's commercial peak "Bigfoot" (2014) — at which point the sound had moved decisively from 138 BPM uplifting trance into festival-format big-room house, mirroring the wider mainstage convergence that dominated 2013-2016 dance music. Collaborations with Hardwell, Armin van Buuren and the broader EDM Top 10 followed, and the duo's DJ Mag ranking peaked at 13th in 2016 with continuous Top 20 placement since 2011. The pure-trance side of the duo was preserved by launching the NWYR alias in 2017 as a dedicated psychedelic-trance / uplifting outlet, releasing tracks including "Voltage" and "Dragon" that returned to the kind of 138 BPM melodic content the original W&W catalogue had largely vacated. The main label was rebranded to Rave Culture in October 2018 to match the duo's harder, more rave-oriented late-2010s direction, and the catalogue has continued at that pace into the 2020s — including the January 2025 single "OIIA OIIA (Spinning Cat)," built around an internet-meme cat audio loop that became one of the year's most-streamed Dutch dance releases.