Italians Do It Better is an independent American label run by the musician and producer Johnny Jewel, home to his bands Chromatics, Glass Candy and Desire.[1] Synthwave fans know it mostly through the Drive soundtrack, which included Chromatics and Desire songs.[1] The surprise in the Frekvenci archive is how little of the label is synthwave by tag: of its 37 listed releases, 24 are in the pop-leaning family and only 8 in the synthwave family.
Where does Italians Do It Better come from?
Two sources give two founding years. The Electricity Club and Wikipedia say 2006; Jewel himself told Vice in 2013 that he started it in 2007 with After Dark.[1][2][3] The sensible reading is that it was set up in 2006 and its first records came out in 2007, but we could not confirm that. Either way it began as a joint venture between Jewel and Mike Simonetti, whose Troubleman Unlimited label had put out Glass Candy's earlier music; Simonetti left in 2014.[1]
Jewel has said why he wanted his own label: "I didn't want someone telling me when a record was due."[2] He told Vice he ran it with no employees or publicists, had little patience for pre-orders or advertising for art, and wanted the artwork to look hand-made, mixing glam, disco, dada and punk.[2] That control is a big part of what the label feels like: slow releases, a strong look, music described by its own makers as "night music".[1] The name, according to Wikipedia, comes from a slogan on a T-shirt Madonna wore in her 1986 "Papa Don't Preach" video; we did not find that in a primary source.[3]
Why do synthwave fans know it?
The film Drive (premiered at Cannes in May 2011) is the link.[4] According to The Electricity Club, Chromatics' "Tick of the Clock" and Desire's "Under Your Spell" were both in it.[1] The same piece adds that Jewel scored Lost River (2014) and that Chromatics appeared in Twin Peaks: The Return (2017).[1] For listeners who arrived at the genre through the film's Kavinsky and College songs, this label was the next stop, even though its own sound is less about arpeggios and more about slow, hazy pop. The film's wider effect on the genre is told in How synthwave went mainstream: Drive, Stranger Things and Blinding Lights, against the release numbers.
The catalogue in numbers
Listed releases in the archive run from 2010 to 2025. The label's 2007 compilations are not in that count, since the archive only lists releases that have a listen link and enough confidence in the data. By listed releases, it ranks 51st among labels.
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Year | Releases |
|---|---|
| 2010 | 1 |
| 2011 | 0 |
| 2012 | 1 |
| 2013 | 1 |
| 2014 | 0 |
| 2015 | 2 |
| 2016 | 1 |
| 2017 | 1 |
| 2018 | 3 |
| 2019 | 2 |
| 2020 | 5 |
| 2021 | 11 |
| 2022 | 3 |
| 2023 | 1 |
| 2024 | 1 |
| 2025 | 4 |
The shape is unlike most labels. It starts almost invisible, with no more than one or two listed releases in most years until 2018, then jumps to 5 in 2020 and 11 in 2021, the peak, before settling back to 3 in 2022. Four listed releases in 2025 is the most since the 2021 peak. Singles are part of the 2021 surge, among them Double Mixte's Future Lights and Juno Francis's Sunday Morning.
The format split reflects it. Of 37 releases, 15 are singles and 14 are LPs, with 5 filed as other, 2 compilations and 1 EP. A label with more singles than albums is behaving more like a pop label than a rock or electronic one. Formats on file are CD, digital and vinyl. None is marked self-released.
The Electricity Club also mentions a 2021 Madonna tribute album with 20 covers by 19 artists.[1] The archive's Madonna tribute is dated 2024, probably a reissue or a different edition, so treat that date with care.
What does it sound like?
By community tags, the label is synth-pop first. 17 of its releases carry that genre tag, 8 synthwave, 6 italo disco and 3 darkwave, and the co-tags add pop (6), dance-pop (2) and nu-disco (1). The italo disco tag covers records such as Orion's Higher and Sally Shapiro's 2025 album, below; our Italo disco and synthwave: the 1980s sound that keeps coming back page explains how that older dance style relates to synthwave. The hazy, slow side matches the dream-pop tag on two releases, a link followed in Dream pop and synthwave: the shoegaze-adjacent overlap.
Not everything is soft. The darkwave-tagged releases, such as Love Object's single and MOTHERMARY's 2023 album I Am Your God, sit in the dark corner of the family, and Dlina Volny's 2025 album In Between does too. Darkwave vs darksynth: two dark genres people mix up draws the line between that tradition and the heavier darksynth sound.
Key artists
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Artist | Releases |
|---|---|
| Chromatics | 6 |
| Sally Shapiro | 5 |
| MOTHERMARY | 3 |
| Ramxes | 3 |
| Johnny Jewel | 2 |
| Symmetry | 2 |
| Dlina Volny | 2 |
| Desire | 2 |
| Causeway | 2 |
| Appaloosa | 1 |
- Chromatics have 6 of their 6 listed releases on the label.
- Sally Shapiro (Sweden) has 5 of her 8 listed releases here, all from 2021 on. The Electricity Club ties her arrival on the label to a return after a 2016 retirement.[1]
- MOTHERMARY and Ramxes have 3 each.
- Johnny Jewel has 2 listed solo releases, Desire has 2, and Symmetry has 2.
Country is known for 54.1% of the label's releases, so the picture is partial. Among those, the United States has 13, Sweden 5 and Lithuania 2.
Records to start with
Ten records, one from each stretch of the label's listed catalogue, from film-score instrumentals to club singles.
- Symmetry · 2012 · Italians Do It Better · LPA 2012 album, tagged italo disco, by Jewel's side project; the instrumental, film-score end of the label.
- Chromatics · 2015 · Italians Do It Better · OTHERA 2015 Chromatics release from the band's main years on the label.
- Jorja Chalmers · 2019 · Italians Do It Better · LPA 2019 album tagged dream pop, the softest record in this list.
- Orion · 2020 · Italians Do It Better · SINGLEA 2020 single tagged italo disco, to hear the label's dance side.
- Double Mixte · 2021 · Italians Do It Better · SINGLEA 2021 single from the year of the label's peak.
- Causeway · 2022 · Italians Do It Better · LPA 2022 synth-pop album from the label's recent roster.
- Sally Shapiro · 2025 · Italians Do It Better · LPA 2025 album; the newest listed record by the Swedish act, who has five listings here.
What is the label doing now?
It is still releasing. The archive has four 2025 entries, including albums by Desire, Dlina Volny and Sally Shapiro, which keeps the label inside the archive's "active" window (a listed release in the year before the 18 Oct 2026 snapshot). Nothing for 2026 is listed yet, but 2026 is a part year and that is not a sign of slowing.
If you want more in this mood, the Dreams station (88.1 FM) on the radio is the closest match. For another pop-leaning label with a very different story, read about Aztec Records; the field as a whole is in Synthwave labels worth knowing, and which are still active. The Italians Do It Better page in the archive lists every release in order.
Sources
- Italians Do It Better: night music from Johnny Jewel's label · The Electricity Club, 24 Aug 2021
- An Extremely Long Interview with Johnny Jewel · Vice / Noisey, 18 Jul 2013
- Italians Do It Better (used as a map to its references) · Wikipedia
- Drive (2011 film) · Wikipedia