When we talk about American dance music, we're usually talking about Detroit, Chicago and New York. Pittsburgh? Not so much. If you're not from the United States (or an American football fan), the name might not conjure anything in particular. And if you are, it's likely you'll see it through the lens of the past—sprawling steel mills, soupy air thick with smog—or the crumbling present of so many Rust Belt towns. Like Detroit, techno's ancestral home to its northwest, Pittsburgh was hit hard as America's economy shifted away from manufacturing in the latter part of the 20th century. The steel industry vanished and took wealth, jobs and many of its workers with it. These days, you can find generations of Pittsburghers living throughout America in a kind of domestic diaspora; it's the reason every city in the country, no matter how distant from western Pennsylvania, seems to have at least one Steelers bar.

Not everyone's left, though. "We've at some point always had the opportunity to go somewhere," says Preslav Lefterov, a Pittsburgher since his family emigrated from Bulgaria when he was a teenager. He and Thomas Cox, a fellow Pittsburgh lifer, are on a relatively rare trip outside the City Of Bridges (with 446 spanning its rivers, the Allegheny and Monongahela, nowhere has more) for a string of European DJ gigs. They've met me at a café in Berlin, where we're in the midst of a conversation over big steins of lemonade. He's explaining that, despite Pittsburgh boasting major research universities and museums, it's not traditionally a center for music. The city's been rife with microscenes and musical influences through the years—dancehall, jungle, hip-hop of all regional varieties, plus the house and techno Pittsburghers would hear during Movement pilgrimages each year—but it's lacked the infrastructure to support it. "It's not like we couldn't move to some other city where there was a more vibrant music scene," Lefterov says. "But it wasn't something that—it almost, to us, seemed like cheating the city out a little bit."

Cox puts it in considerably starker terms. "The dance music scene in Pittsburgh was really dead—like really, really, really dead. We were some of the people who stuck that out."

The "we" is Pittsburgh Track Authority, the trio he and Lefterov formed with Adam Ratana, another old friend who in a previous musical life had produced drum & bass with Lefterov. (Ratana, the only member with a non-music day job, had to sit out this particular jaunt. All three are set to tour Europe this fall.) Pittsburgh has produced its share of names in the last decade—Wiz Khalifa and Girl Talk come to mind—but PTA has drawn attention to its underground in a way few artists have. If their hustle-centric approach plays out as planned, they might help put Pittsburgh on the map, if not sketch a template for other under-the-radar localities to do the same.

Cox, Lefterov and Ratana have been making some of the grooviest house singles out there at the moment: straightforward and tidily produced tunes like those on Untitled / Monongahela Rainforest, their first single on their own Pittsburgh Tracks label, offer a well-groomed counterpoint to the grimy face that L.I.E.S., the prolific Brooklyn label, has put on American dance music these last few years. Their name, however, sounds a little combative, especially if you know Cox as pipecock, a longtime presence on dance music forums and blogs known for extolling what you might call "realness" in house and techno. (He's also an erstwhile RA contributor, the interviewer to whom Omar-S said, "I don't even know who Ricardo Willalobo is.")

"As I grew increasingly disillusioned with the constant 'progression' of UK dance music," Cox once wrote in an infamous guest post on Detroit for mnml ssgs, "I found comfort in the references to all the other music I liked in techno. Jazz, reggae, soul, funk, pop, it was all in there but twisted up into a cohesive sound that still sounded more fresh than the music that sold itself as being 'futuristic.'"

Cox and Lefterov describe Pittsburgh Track Authority as a deeply collaborative effort, one where any member might start a track in his own studio and another might finish it in his. But the music itself fits almost perfectly into this ideal Cox described some years back. I wonder if their name is meant to designate them as self-proclaimed standard-bearers for dance music—the Pittsburgh stuff or otherwise.

"You're aware of the connection, right?" Cox asks me. He often sports a mischievous grin, a perfect match for his internet persona, and it's currently spread across his face. "PTA. Think about it for a second."

I'm not following him. Seeing that I'm stumped, Lefterov jumps in. "Preslav, Tom and Adam."

"It's very, very corny," Cox adds. They explain that the name was basically an afterthought—a necessity after Lerato Khati's Uzuri label signed the group and was set to release their first EP. Referencing their names, their city and a favorite Rheji Burrell project on Nu Groove, Pittsburgh Track Authority covered all the right bases. They allow, though, that "authority" isn't entirely without significance. Cox says it reflects the reality of their place in the city's musical hierarchy: "Anybody who's doing underground music at a pretty high level in Pittsburgh has dealt with us in some fashion." He's almost certainly right, but Lefterov softens the stance and takes a wider view. "I think it was somewhat tongue-in-cheek," he says, "but there really wasn't, in Pittsburgh, a music production history or pedigree."

The trio is in a unique position to establish both. Lefterov, who studied neuroscience in college, began work on the former in 2004 when he co-founded Machine Age, a recording studio on Polish Hill well-stocked with drum machines and synthesizers. "It wasn't just one day I decided I'd rather be in the music business than go to medical school," he says of his unlikely professional trajectory. "It was more the fact that music is all consuming. I personally had a hard time doing what I was doing because I was obsessed with music." When Cox, an engineering major, came to a similar crossroads with what he wanted to do professionally, he began logging long hours at the studio, too.

Machine Age created a locus of activity for the city's small production community. "I'm not against people using computers for music, obviously, but I think that the ability to do everything yourself in a computer has led to a smaller scope of what [producers] can look at doing. They can sit there in their house after doing another job, bang it out and have some success. I'm not saying they shouldn't but thinking and existing that way, it limits what you can do."

Ratana's move back after a stint in New York at the end of the '00s was what ultimately got the ball rolling on Pittsburgh Track Authority: he and Lefterov were interested in working on some house music, and Cox was itching to do the same. In Machine Age, they had a perfect place to tinker. "We had a very good working environment," Lefterov says. "We had time. It was like, let's hit the studio and see what we can do."

Their first four tracks, including one made in collaboration with fellow Pittsburgher Nice Rec, took about a week each, and they all made it onto the aptly titled The First Four EP, released in 2011 on Uzuri. The EP was a mash of American styles—New York swagger met Detroit's gritty funk, with plenty of Chicago's dusty machines thrown into the mix. The influence of these cities was prevalent in dance music at the time, but they made perfect sense for a group geographically sandwiched between them, whose members have long DJ'd with records from all three. "We're not gonna come and play all New York vocal tracks, but we're gonna play some," Cox explains. "We're not gonna play all jacked-out Chicago beat tracks, but we're gonna play some." In Pittsburgh, "Nobody is ever doing 'that one thing.' They maybe concentrated on one area but took influence from everyone else—and you end up with sort of that melting-pot style that we have."

As PTA move into their third year of releases, that's translating into a notably diverse discography. A recent release for Rotating Souls, April Boogie, ran thick with disco flourishes, whereas Giza, a 12-inch on Argot from last year steeped in two-step and electro, wouldn't be a bad fit for a Ben UFO set. But the group isn't just burrowing deep into American obscurities: one of their biggest records so far was an edit of Jennifer Hudson's "Spotlight." I ask how this squares with their underground credentials and get a pair of confused looks. "We love underground dance music," Cox assures. "It's what we do. But at the same time, I think that the pop music thing has always been in Pittsburgh, in underground dance music." He ties their penchant for pop back to one of the city's few dance music heroes, the late owner of the now-shuttered Hyper Vinyl Records, Trevor Combee. "He was one of the most influential DJs in Pittsburgh for house and techno, and he would always play pop records.

"We like vocals, we like catchy songs. I think it would get awfully boring and restricting to keep trying to make the same record over and over and over again," he says. We go on to discuss the undeniable influence of pop on their taste and production aesthetic, touching on favorite Neptunes records, J Dilla's productions for Janet Jackson and their palpable excitement that the year's most talked-about major label release—Daft Punk's Random Access Memories—was basically a disco project. It's clear they're not obsessed with the sanctity of their art as a purely non-commercial enterprise. "I don't think, at any point really, the music can speak just for itself," Lefterov says. "For me, that's just another gimmick."

This rankles Cox. "We recognize that when music is consumed by another person, everything is done purposely, by somebody. The idea to be lo-fi in 2013 is a choice someone makes. The idea to be anonymous is a choice someone makes. It's a marketing tool. People gave Jeff Mills shit for having an Axis beach towel or Omar-S for having a fancy ice cube tray. To me, that shit is cool, man. They aren't trying to fool you—they're just like, 'Here's my stuff, you can buy it or not.'"

"People are trying to live off this shit, you know?" Lefterov adds.

Pittsburgh Track Authority isn't a part-time endeavor or some bedroom project; it's trying to take whatever energy has been building in Pittsburgh and funnel it into something unique and lasting. From the sound of it, things are about as good in the music scene as they've been in Pittsburgh in ages. (It's a trend that falls in line with the city's surprising revival as a whole.) A major regional festival has sprouted up, and bars that once booked mostly rock bands are packing their calendars with DJ bookings and dance parties. Promoters have made sure that the producers popping up in Pittsburgh Track Authority DJ sets are coming through town, and they say crowds have been especially enthusiastic about fellow Americans like Omar-S and the Future Times crew. I'm curious if the city's stodgier elements have been less eager about all this new noise. "Pittsburgh is just excited that there are young people living in the city again," Cox says. "15 years ago that wasn't the case. You went to college here, then you moved the fuck out."

The guys bristle at the idea of Pittsburgh as a kind of promise land, though—a nascent mid-Atlantic Berlin where you can work full-time on music and DJ to discerning crowds every weekend. "You see people from America become successful and move overseas," Lefterov says, "and basically at that point they become an overseas producer, because they don't have that hustler mentality. And that's cool. It's not for everyone. But I think America really respects people who can hustle."

"It all comes down to how bad you want this," Cox says. "No one is going to give you a handout for that shit. I wish there were more programs that enabled people." Pittsburgh Track Authority isn't such a program, per se, but if you're willing to make it as serious a pursuit as they have, you'll have their utmost respect. "We expect you to be as all in as we are, and if you are, you can be in the family. We'll see where we can take it."

Pittsburgh subway tracks