Star of the year: Oliver Heldens

"I've been touring on weekends so my school work suffered and I graduated at a lower level than I was supposed to," says Oliver Heldens (19) of how 'Gecko' transformed his life.

The deep and dubby electro-flavoured track was already an underground anthem before its release in January on Spinnin' Records and spent eight weeks at No 2 in Beatport's charts when Pete Tong's iconic FFRR imprint spotted its crossover potential. Embellished with Becky Hill's soaring vocals, 'Gecko/Overdrive' topped the UK charts and went Gold as it shifted over 400,000 copies as well as clocking 15m YouTube views and 9m SoundCloud plays.

The Rotterdam native was catapulted from the classroom into EDM's big league, where he played puppet-master to audiences of tens of thousands on main stages of EDC Orlando, EDC Vegas, Tomorrowland, SW4, Creamfields and Global Gathering. "It's really crazy how one track changed so much for me – within two months of 'Gecko' coming out, all the big DJs and whole EDM scene knew me and were supporting my track," explains Heldens, who signed to Spinnin' Records at 17.

The aim now is to keep his his feet firmly on the ground and focus on sharing the tracks clogging his hard drive. Tracks with Tiësto, Zeds Dead and Sander van Doorn are forthcoming in 2015 and his electro-house banger 'Koala' (4m YouTube views so far) is another bona fide underground smash, and has been earmarked by FFRR for mainstream success with a radio-friendly vocal version ('Last All Night').

Heldens is keen to school the masses in dance music history: "Old Dutch house really inspired me and I really like UK bass with its garage influences – I'm trying to combine these and make music that's really groovy and powerful," he explains. "Some people call it 'main stage deep house' or 'power deep house', and that change in EDM is really important. Many people think the groovy stuff will dominate and I'm really proud to be part of that

Oliver Heldens' highlights of 2014

'Gecko' (Spinnin')
A taut, deep and delicious tech-house anthem with an understated sense of drama

'Koala' (Spinnin')
Banging, synapse-snapping electro-house doesn't come better than this

'Pikachu' (Spinnin')

A collab with Mr Belt & Wezol, this driving piano-house track boasts Pokemon samples and a cheeky sense of humour