London is melting. The early July heatwave has emptied Tube carriages, packed out parks and pub gardens, and made a strong case for air conditioning engineers to be bumped to key worker status. Sitting next to me on the sofa at her record label’s Notting Hill HQ — brow free of sweat, long hair deadly straight, a patchwork of fineline tattoos emerging from the rolled-up sleeves of her lace top — Peggy Gou is unfazed. “Let’s enjoy it! It’s not going to last for long,” she says to counter my very British weather complaint. “I’m always chasing the sun.”
Not even the intermittent air-con in the room can get dance music’s leading lady down. “I have a good feeling about summer,” she tells me, her own just beginning after a slew of festival appearances in Barcelona, Porto and Copenhagen and her 35th birthday celebrations the week before. She usually spends the day in Ibiza, but this year settled on London (where she’s lived since 2024), specifically Mayfair’s Maison Estelle. “I had a little private dinner, went downstairs for a boogie, and ended up at The Box at 4am. The rest is history.”
