Pete Dafeet (facebook, myspace, twitter, discogs) is the co-founder of quirky UK Deep House label Lost My Dog, and has worked with labels including Toolroom and Robsoul.

In June, Pete is releasing Lost My Dog: 5 Years & Still Looking, a mix compilation celebrating the highlights of Lost My Dog's 5 year history. So consider this mix and interview with Pete a celebration of the celebration! The full Q&A and playlist immediately follows the mix below:

House Music's infamous for weird label names, but "Lost My Dog" is one of the oddest. How did the name come about?

Pete Dafeet: We started the label back in 2005 when we all lived in Loughborough (in the UK's East Midlands), and we spent weeks trying to think of a name - we wanted something fun and accessible, but everything we came up with sounded cheesy, clichéd, or boring. Finally, during a conversation online Najan just came out with "I've lost my dog". Ian and I thought he'd actually lost his poodle or something so got all sympathetic, but once we remembered he didn't actually have a dog we decided it was a keeper! It's been a great asset - we have a couple of really talented designers involved with the label and it's given them a license to have fun with their work, and create a brand that really sticks in people's minds.

Your 5 year anniversary is coming up, and our 5 year anniversary is in August. Give me the big picture on how things have changed since 2005.

Pete Dafeet: The biggest change in dance music has been the development of the internet, and the subsequent transition from vinyl to digital. We started Lost My Dog when vinyl was still king, but sales were seriously declining. That made our task all the more challenging, and we're delighted that we've made is this far (a feeling that I'm sure is shared by you guys as you approach your own 5th birthday!)

The move to digital has completely changed how labels operate. We weren't the biggest fans of digital music to start, but the internet has made so much more possible. We can now connect directly with the people that play our music, and we can fail (and learn from our mistakes) quicker than ever. As an example, when I'm in the studio I can post tracks I'm working on to Facebook and Twitter and get instant feedback from the people that like my music - I can quickly figure out what works and what doesn't. How cool is it that?! It's a really exciting time to be involved in house music, there's no doubt whatsoever about that.

As for me personally, I'm a few years older, a few years wiser, but still a pretty naive kiddo!

What do you think you've figured out in the last few years from an A&R/label head honcho standpoint that some of the older labels haven't?

Pete Dafeet: Agility has been a necessity for house labels in the last decade. When Amato (our distributor) went bust in 2007 we -like many other labels - lost a lot of money, and we had to think on our feet to ensure we stayed afloat. Lost My Dog was born into a very tough time for the House Music industry, so we've had to be on our toes from the start, and open to new ways of doing things. The key to succeeding in House Music these days is constantly working hard, trying new things, and learning from your mistakes as quickly as you possibly can. But above everything else, you need to be remarkable - there are so many other labels around, you simply have to stand out.

In terms of differences between young and old labels, a lot of the newer guys have a better understanding of what makes good content (and that's no disrespect to any of the older guys, it's just what the newer guys have had to do in order to stand out). It's no longer just your music that people are interested in, they want to experience your label with all their senses, and right now: people want to listen to your live sets the day after the gig, they want to see photos and videos while you're actually playing, and they want to talk with you throughout - not be talked at. The internet lets people connect on a whole new level with each other: there's no room or purpose for big egos anymore. People don't want arrogance behind the decks, they want to chat to the DJ on a level.

"I Wish I Was Parisian". Explain! (That's just a sick EP! I love it and it was so far out of leftfield for 2007. If it came out today I think a track like "Tank" and to a lesser extent "Frozen" would get you called a Minimalist Master and you'd have to start dressing in black and get really moody photographs taken.)

Pete Dafeet: I'm not sure about dressing in black, so probably good that it came out a few years back! It was a very, very fun record to make - I had just moved to London and was having my eyes opened every day by new experiences. The tracks are all quite different, and I think they reflect how much I was taking in at the time - a wide eyed 22 year old in the big city lights! I was really surprised and delighted when Phil (Weeks) decided to sign them; the tracks (especially Frozen) were quite different from a lot of the records he was releasing on Robsoul at the time. I'm sure they were lost on some people, but I look back on it as one of my favourite records. As for the name: Phil's from Paris and it was a ringing endorsement for his city. Paris is an amazing place, and everyone you see is effortlessly cool - I think we all wish we were from Paris every now and then!

So tell me about the comp coming out. How do you take 5 years of releases and boil it down to one mix?

Pete Dafeet: The concept was pretty simple (the best tracks from 5 years of Lost My Dog) but it took me a good few months to settle on the playlist, and it got a bit tight in the end - I had to get ruthless on a few of my favourites to meet the deadline. We have a back catalogue full of tracks I really love, so getting it down to 14 was more than a little tricky. I'm really happy with how it turned out though, I think it's a true representation of the label to date and the focus is firmly on the music and the artists that have made us what we are: people like Yse, Jay Tripwire, Harold Heath, Nick Dare, Fred Everything, the list goes on and on and on. Just looking forward to the next five years now!