From Dorm Room Producer to Club Catalyst: Meet obee

There’s something about artists who teach themselves that just hits different. Maybe it’s the stubbornness. Maybe it’s the curiosity. Maybe it’s the fact that nobody told them the “right” way to do it, so they built their own, enter obee.

Born Owen Barclay and raised in small-town Vermont, obee is the kind of kid who ran out of his second piano lesson at age seven… and then went home and taught himself anyway. No formal training, no rigid structure. Just YouTube videos, muscle memory, and an obsession with remembering where his hands sat on the keys. That DIY instinct never left. Now 28 and operating under the alias obee, he’s crafting electronic/dance-pop records that feel massive but personal, like they were made in a dorm room with the door wide open, because they kind of were.

During his freshman year at Ithaca College (where he studied film), most days were spent holed up in his room making beats, digging through his father’s record collection, and experimenting with sound. He’d leave the door open on purpose. Kids from the dorm would wander in just to sit, listen, hang, and watch him build tracks in real time. Sometimes they’d request a beat. Sometimes they’d just vibe out to whatever vinyl was spinning.

Before electronic music fully grabbed him, his early inspirations were bands like The Beatles, U2, and Coldplay, melody-first artists with emotional backbone. But everything shifted in late high school when friends started sending him ski videos soundtracked by Skrillex, deadmau5, and The Glitch Mob. The drops. The grit. The drama. It was cinematic. It felt like adrenaline.

Fast forward a few years of DJing college parties, releasing music under different aliases, and absorbing the pre-pandemic New York club scene while working as a photographer, obee found his lane. He describes his sound as chasing “heart-string euphoria.” It’s dance music with emotional stakes. Hands up, feet stomping, eyes closed type energy.

His latest single, “DON’T STOP ME,” might be his most direct statement yet.

On the surface, it’s a house-leaning, club-ready pop record. The kind where you feel the tension building and you know the drop is coming, and when it does, it lands. Hard. There’s something nostalgic about the structure, but the sound design feels current. Unique vocal edits. Punchy percussion. A beat that doesn’t just drop - it explodes.

But underneath the banger exterior, there’s something sharper.

“DON’T STOP ME” is about being gaslit, by other people, sure, but also by your own inner voice. It’s about that weird pressure that creeps in during your late twenties when, on paper, you’re doing better than ever… yet the doubt gets louder. You start comparing. You question if you’re enough. You remember the toxicity from past relationships that left stains on your confidence and instead of spiraling quietly, obee turned it into a rebel shout.

He calls the track “an intentional self-gaslight to not be gaslit.” It’s defiant. It’s sarcastic. It’s a middle finger to exes, to haters, to the voice that says you should quit. It’s also, as he bluntly puts it, “a banger.”

There’s a layer of catharsis here that feels earned. He’s in a healthy relationship now, which gives him the clarity to look back at past dynamics without romanticizing them. “DON’T STOP ME” becomes less about bitterness and more about reclamation. Using adversity as fuel. Using hate as ignition. He does it all himself. Producer. Engineer. Writer. Self-taught musician. The whole operation runs through him. He’s proud of that, while also being grounded enough to admit no one gets anywhere entirely alone.

“DON’T STOP ME” feels like the exact moment the lights go low in a club and the anticipation stretches just a little too long. That breath before impact. Then the beat drops and suddenly everyone’s moving at once.