This week, Perth girl Jade Diary’s Cold Hearted gets a work-over by a UK DJ, and a little know US worship leader works with some of the biggest names in Christian and pop music on his latest project.

If you’re into big dance music, songs driven by melody, funk and larger than life beats, then get ready for Will Darling’s remix of Jade Diary’s song Cold Hearted. Darling is a rising figure in the international electronic dance music community from the UK who’s worked with Kings Of Leon.

Jade Diary is a young singer/songwriter from Perth who’s been generating significant interest on Australian Christian radio. Cold Hearted, her summer hit on The Rock Across Australia charts, is a story about an elf princess who carves a man from ice. The song is a metaphor warning us against making idols of people and things.

Jade says getting the chance to work with Darling on the song has been a rewarding experience.

“This is the second time that I’ve worked with Will Darling. And he wanted to work on another song of mine. And he chose Coldhearted. It was a very rewarding experience working with him on the song because he was very open to my ideas and he’s just taken the song to a whole new level. So I’m really happy with the result.”

In other music news, Todd Ballard, a little-known American worship leader, has had an incredible opportunity to work with some of the biggest names Christian and pop music.

For example, his worship team for many years has featured members of OneRepublic. And one of them—Brent Kutzelhas—played on Ballard’s new solo project called Anthems.

Todd’s co-written songs for the album with Ian Eskelin (who’s worked with Francesca Battistelli, Chris August and Nathan Tasker) as well as Chris McClarney, the songwriter who wrote Your Love Never Fails.

This is a collection of songs that some say opens up doors for a new, creative sound in the church world. One of these is the song Closer To Me.

“I was more than blessed to be able to work with some great writers on this album and even before that, but some writers who’ve already had songs on CCLI and being played in churches across the nation and probably across the world,” says Todd.

“But honestly the greatest impact that somebody’s made on my life musically is a guy named DJ Frankie. He’s a secular producer; he’s produced everything from Justin Bieber, to Madonna. And he just happened to be a buddy of mine and when he was kind of first getting started out I would play guitars on his tracks for him, piano stuff on his tracks for him and then he would help me create loops for our church.”

“And he taught me more than anything how to write good, catchy songs without overthinking them. This is a guy who’s constantly got something in the top 10 on Billboard and so he’s just been a good friend of mine, he’s just been a good influence for me in just how to hone my craft of writing songs. He even added his own thing to Closer to Me off my album. He kind of put beats to it, just kind of took it to another level.”

Check out the most played songs on Australian Christian radio at therockacrossaustralia.com.

Listen to this edition of TRAA with Cam Want: