“DJs will put anything before the drop.” One of electronic music’s favorite memes is also a notion Close Friends Only knows well.
Two years ago, clips of the California DJ trio’s lively Twitch B2B sessions—nearly every absurd bass drop preceded by any number of hilarious one-liners from members Angeltiz, Keesco, and JustJake—exploded on TikTok, garnering millions of views and launching the group to online fame overnight.
But in addition to what comes before the drop, CFO is just as good at what comes during and after.
With comedy as a gateway to their hard-hitting electronic tunes, the Coachella Valley boys have seized their viral moment to pursue their dance music dreams, emerging as one of the scene’s most closely watched acts and making noise at the heart of a new generation of artists and collaborators repping Latin electronic sounds out of SoCal, alongside more close friends like BOLO, Deorro, Juos, and Rommii.
While holding it down on Twitch, where they still stream live twice a week, the trio’s special guest YouTube mix series, La Carne Asada—inviting major DJs to a raucous backyard cookout B2B rooted in their Mexican-American ubringing—has become one of the scene’s most popular, propelling them to major festival plays at Countdown NYE, Splash House, and EDC Las Vegas, sold-out headline shows, and their first official label releases earlier this year. John Summit even called them “the Brockhampton of EDM.”
As the group played Electric Forest and crossed yet another festival off the bucket list last month—the first date of their first nationwide headline run, the “Hug Your Homies Tour“—EDM Maniac sat down for a greenroom chat with Close Friends Only, who dished about their overnight success story and what’s next.
EDM Maniac: How was the set? How are you guys feeling about being here at Electric Forest?
JustJake: The set was great. The energy was crazy. The crowd got packed out pretty much as soon as we walked up. This is such a bucket-list festival, so it’s so beautiful to be here. The weather is way better here than it is at home, that’s for sure. I’ve been wanting to come for I don’t even know how long, 12 years or something like that, so excited to be able to play it for the first time too. Hopefully, we can come back soon.
EDM Maniac: Have you guys had a chance to walk around and check things out much?
JustJake: We are going to tonight. We’re going to enjoy it, get lost in the Forest, and find Carl.
Keesco: Carl’s lost right now. [All laugh]
EDM Maniac: Is there anything about this set that stands out to you the most?
Angeltiz: Obviously, this festival leans a little more on the bass side, so to see people enjoy our sound and what we brought today was special. Seeing the faces. I like to look at people’s faces in the crowd, specifically, and I point at them, and they get so hyped, so that’s cool for sure.
EDM Maniac: It’s one of many major gigs for you lately. You started the year at Countdown NYE, popped out with Deorro at Beyond Wonderland, sold out the Roxy for your first Los Angeles headline, and played EDC in May. What have been your biggest touring highlights this year?
Keesco: For the recent touring, I want to say definitely the Roxy, bro. I think it was the first taste for our fans to really show them what a CFO headline show looks like. We had a good amount of creative liberty to do what we wanted, like make that show what we wanted to make it. It’s fun touring with other artists, doing direct support, and opening up for other artists, but when people are there to see you, I feel like it’s a lot different. The energy is unmatched, for sure. It was super fun. That’s definitely one for the books for sure.
EDC as well. EDC was super, super fun. First time at EDC, and yeah, we had Casa Bacardi lit as shit. Just seeing our fans in person and interacting with them, it sounds like a cliche, but it’s the best feeling in the world.
EDM Maniac: Angel, the collective aspect of the project sort of starts with you, but how did you guys all get connected and start this up?
Angeltiz: Me and Keesco, we used to make rap music in high school, so we’ve been making music since we were kids. And then a few years later, we met Jake. He was producing more. Before, me and Keesco would produce a lot, so we thought that was cool, to just have a producer in the mix. We got super close after that, and we just caught ourselves all making music together almost every day in the summer of 2023.
Around that time, I had founded a collective that was supposed to be a label or a kind of brand for my artist project at the time, but when we all kind of got together, and we started DJing and got into EDM as an artist project, we said, “Yo let’s all put it all under one roof,” and yeah it just sparked like immediately almost, it felt like. So we just seen the spark and then we took off.
EDM Maniac: When you guys first started up, prior to Twitch, you were doing YouTube sets, correct?
JustJake: I think we had posted maybe like four or five YouTube sets. Anything from house to drum & bass to dubstep, just trying everything to see if something sticks.
We did vlog stuff too on our YouTube channel, like a 24-hour CFO thing, just a lot of stuff to introduce the whole brand as a whole, because CFO, it’s more than just music. It’s a whole brand, it’s a creative collective, it’s a whole lifestyle, so trying to push that agenda forward early on to bring all the content and make people be attached to what it was. So that was beautiful, and then we obviously started using Twitch.
EDM Maniac: What was that shift like, and what inspired the move to focus on Twitch streaming?
JustJake: Twitch had launched a DJ program, and I was like, “Yo, we should just try it and see,” because we all started to DJ, pretty much just for fun. We were throwing shows back in the Coachella Valley ourselves, selling out just small, like warehouse-type vibes and stuff like that, and we saw the DJ program went up, and we’re like, “Yo, let’s do this, have some fun, whatever.” And get better, too. It’s good practice, because we stream for three or four hours, and we just go back-to-back, and have a good time.
Then Keesco started saying some funny stuff on the mic, so we started editing it up and clipping it up, and literally, within like a month or less, it just blew up. Viral. So we’re like, “OK, cool, let’s start ripping it,” doing this literally every day, posting on four different accounts. It was cool.
EDM Maniac: It’s like you guys cracked the game open. In what ways is mixing on stream different from a live gig, and what advantages did you gain from streaming compared to live shows?
Keesco: I think the big difference is just treating it honestly like practice. You know, being able to have direct feedback from whoever’s watching. We’ll play the ID, and hopefully people will ask for it. Like, “Yo, what the fuck was that? Yo, I want the ID.”
Or even just trying shit, like trying this transition from that. If it doesn’t work out, you’re able to try it again, not like in the live show, where you can’t rewind your shit. I mean, you could, but you know what I mean. I think it’s the comfortability of just being home, and streaming to people that fuck with us just really brings out another creative side of how you mix music. It’s not the best to be comfortable all the time, but sometimes when you’re comfortable and having fun, great shit comes from that.
EDM Maniac: As far as the jokes on stream, out of the three of you, who do you think has the best one-liners?
JustJake: I don’t. I suck at it. They’re both pretty funny. They usually write my jokes.
EDM Maniac: Are you guys prepping jokes, or is it ever just off the dome?
Angeltiz: Sometimes it’s off the dome. Sometimes, like some bits, we’ll just really start going back and forth and stuff. Sometimes we’ll talk to chats, we’ll be making a joke. I think we did this whole thing about the DMV, just fucking around. Sometimes it comes very natural to all of us, and other times it’s like, “OK, let’s plan it out.” Let’s see what’s current in today’s world, and you know, see what’s gonna stick.
EDM Maniac: As far as viewership on Twitch and TikTok goes, was there a moment you felt was the turning point?
Angeltiz: The turning point was really quick.
JustJake: Overnight.
Keesco: It was honestly the very first TikTok we posted. It was just me saying a joke and putting a drop right after, and literally overnight, like 20,000 views. A day later, it was up to 80,000. We saw the potential. We tried to ride the momentum, started posting every day after that, and now the rest is history. Now we’re at E Forest. And the crazy story is that we were ready to call it quits, too, like a week before we posted that first TikTok.
Angeltiz: That is true.
Keesco: The artist project, we weren’t progressing too much. We had done a few shows back home, but we didn’t really see longevity in it. We were ready to hang it up, but that’s when Twitch brought out the DJ program, and we used it to our advantage, took the funny moments of our Twitch stream, and put it on TikTok.
Angeltiz: We’re like, this is it, right here, it’s now or never, so we better get on it.
Keesco: We rode the wave, and now we’re here.
EDM Maniac: It’s crazy how things happen like that sometimes. After you guys had the clips and the streams doing numbers, in 2025, you started up La Carne Asada. What was the inspiration there, and how did it take things to the next level?
Angetiz: Obviously, after the momentum from the clips on TikTok, turning a viral moment into a career and something that people want to stay for, we had to brainstorm a lot. I thought La Carne Asada, that’s something that represents us. We’re Mexican, and that’s our culture, so I thought it was pretty cool. Instead of having people on stream with the greenscreen, let’s create something new and fresh. So we thought, “Hey, let’s reach out,” because at the time we were getting a lot of big DJs following us. So it was like, OK, let’s see, let’s add some value to a link-up or something, and let’s see what we could do.
And yeah, shoutout to all the first people that really were just down. I think Disco Lines was our first one. Shoutout Thad. Because at that point it wasn’t nothing. He didn’t know what he was walking into, but he was still down to do something with us.
The clips went off, and from there, I think we had like three Carne Asadas in one month, in April last year. So we’re just going crazy at that point, and ever since, we just try to elevate it more, and more and more. We did a live one with Chris Lorenzo, where we invited a ton of people, so yeah, just trying to elevate it.
EDM Maniac: What does it mean to you to fold that aspect of your culture and upbringing into your careers?
JustJake: It’s beautiful. Just being able to use our culture and where we come from and be able to relate to people too, because we obviously have a lot of fans that share similar cultures, and we also have a lot of fans all over the world that are from very different cultures, so it’s a cool thing both ways.
But it’s just great to be able to also find similar people, too, and have friends that kind of come from a similar area, too. We’re really close with BOLO, for example. It’s a very good friendship there, obviously, apart from just what you see on social media and stuff. Latino culture is definitely on the rise right now. It’s beautiful to see, 24/7. Just shoutout every Latino producer, DJ, whatever artist.
Angeltiz: It’s also great to represent the next wave of what it is to be Latino or Mexican in EDM. It’s great for people also to recognize that and see that it’s happening in front of their eyes. For us, it’s the biggest honor to be able to represent for our people. It’s a beautiful thing, and we’re all very close homies, everybody in that group, BOLO, Deorro, Juos. It’s amazing.
EDM Maniac: You guys have also moved into dropping official releases. We got “Tembleque” in March and “Move Like That” with BOLO on Vibraza and Thirty Knots in April. What has it been like stepping into that full-length process from production to publishing?
JustJake: It was a long-awaited journey for sure. That’s the first thing for us. Producing, making music. For us, that was like, that’s gotta be top priority. Fortunately, we were able to pick up a good team, solid management people that helped us creatively with the rollout and stuff like that, and to be able to be smart and strategic with it, instead of just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks.
We were able to finally craft the sound, the tech house sound we’re doing, and use that. And obviously, with “Tembleque,” we got a lot of great support from Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and that really just solidified it. Like “OK, cool, we’re in this kind of database, we’re in this groove, let’s just keep it rolling.” Fortunately, we were able to collab with some really cool people, too, that will hopefully come out down the road. We’ll see.
It’s a blessing, man. We’re locked in in the studio right now. This is the dream life that we’ve always manifested for the last few years, to be able to just be on tour. And when we’re in the plane or airport, at the hotel, we’re just making music, and when we get home in the studio. It’s the best feeling in the world.
EDM Maniac: You’ve got some fresh tunes in the pipeline. What can you tell us about those?
JustJake: We have this one song called “FCKD BY THE BASS.” Very crazy name right there [laughs]. That’s with our homegirl Sarah de Warren. She’s super sick, super cool. That one’s gonna be the next single. We teased some new IDs out here. We have some ‘90s freestyle breakbeat stuff that we’re trying to tease. We’re just working on a bunch of new music.
Hopefully, we can get a few more records out before the year’s over. Going into 2027, the goal is just having a bunch of stuff in the arsenal going into the new year, so that it can just start flowing out easily, and we could just have full-blown sets, too, that are our music. That’s the goal.
EDM Maniac: As we get into the second half of the year, the tour dates are continuing to pick up. You just announced your “Hug Your Homies” tour. Coast-to-coast, six headline dates, a few festivals. How are you feeling about that, and what can we expect?
Keesco: Excited, man. Traveling has been probably one of the highlights of doing this whole artist project, for sure, seeing just how much people fuck with us in other places than home. Dallas has shown us a lot of love. Chicago has shown us a lot of love. We’re excited to go back to Denver. We’re gonna be in Arizona next week, for Fourth of July weekend in Tempe. It’s gonna be a movie. I’m super excited. It’s been a long time coming. Going to cities that we haven’t been to and spreading the CFO culture. Can’t beat it.
Featured image courtesy: Close Friends Only.