Brooklyn, N.Y.

and San Francisco

Maya Jane Coles, a superior electronic-music producer, doubles as a DJ, a job that requires her to whip among far-flung venues. On Friday, she spun tracks at a club in Brooklyn, then flew across the country to DJ in San Francisco Saturday night. Sunday found her at the mammoth Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, which, with about 400,000 attendees, is among America's largest dance-music events. For the rest of this week, she's off to festivals in Belfast and Amsterdam. At age 26, Ms. Coles is living the life.

She's also carving out her own niche in the world of electronic dance music. Inspired by trip-hop and house, Ms. Coles has her own sound as a producer: As illustrated on her 2013 album "Comfort," it's fluid, alluring, textured and mature, and serves as a reminder of what electronic music can be.

"Music has to leave you with an emotion you want to feel again," the petite, soft-spoken Londoner said over cocktails in Brooklyn last week. "I want to hit that spot."

She snubs the kind of tedious, unimaginative music that's come to define the electronic dance scene. As for producers who churn out booming, mass-market EDM, "the crazy thing for me is I get booked alongside those artists," she said, "but I'd never give in to that sound." To resist, she said, "You have to be really, really strong in your identity." Her defiance even extends to the name of her own record label, I/AM/ME.