Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" May Rule the Summer Students in this year's high school musical at the School of the Future in Manhattan were milling around the auditorium before a performance the other day, when a senior hooked his phone to the sound system and played a new song he had found online. The beat was pure 1970s disco - smooth vocals, a funky syncopated guitar riff riding over a tight drum-and-bass groove. The teenagers, who were born two decades after disco died, started moving to the music. "Everyone resonated with it," recalled Sora Suzuki, 16. You just kind of get absorbed into it. It's got this old feel about it. The song was Daft Punk's "Get Lucky," a nod to disco from a French electronic duo known for kitschy robot costumes, machinelike vocals and computer-generated beats. Since it was released on April 19, the song has rapidly ascended to No. 4 on the Billboard singles chart, making it an early candidate to become the song of the summer. It is the first Top 10 pop hit for the musicians, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, and it has thrust their sci-fi brand of dance music upon a wider audience, even propelling their fourth studio album, "Random Access Memories" (Daft Life/Columbia) to No. 1 on the Billboard album chart. The album, Daft Punk's first since 2010, has sold 339,000 copies since it was released last week, putting the group on par with more mainstream acts like Pink and Dave Matthews. Radio programmers say that "Get Lucky" reinforces a recent Top 40 trend of hit songs that mine the sounds of 1970s disco and R&B, among them Justin Timberlake's "Suit & Tie" and Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines." What is more, the song is getting airplay and generating requests from listeners across several radio formats - Top 40, hip-hop, alternative, even Spanish-language pop stations - with its timeless, rapturous message about finding a soul mate (or at least a bedmate) at a dance party. Dylan Sprague, who programs Clear Channel stations in Boston, said he has put the song into rotation on three stations devoted to electronic dance music, hip-hop and Top 40 and that it has become one of the most requested songs on all three formats. "Just anecdotally, I feel like it's everybody's favorite song, no matter who the person is demographically," he said. It's got great lyrics. It's easy to digest, easy to sing along with. It's got a nostalgic vibe and yet it still sounds current and hip, a little disco-y and dance-y. It just works across multiple formats. So how does a disco song become a hit with the millennial generation? Radio programmers note the pop charts list more dance-oriented songs than at any point since the late 1970s, a consequence of the surging popularity of electronic dance music. In that world, Daft Punk has long had a cult following and is viewed as the progenitor of electronic acts like Skrillex and Deadmau5. Programmers also say that vocals from Pharrell Williams, the singer and songwriter known for his work with N.E.R.D. and the Neptunes, also help the track resonate with young urban and pop audiences. "It has a good dance vibe to it," said Aaron Zytle, program director for KRXP, an alternative station in Colorado Springs. And it's got Pharrell on it, which gives it credibility for Top 40 and urban stations. "Get Lucky" is Daft Pink's highest charting single ever on Billboard's Hot 100; its only other contenders were "Around the World" in 1997 and "One More Time" in 2000, neither of which ever reached the Top 40, though they did well on dance charts. An all-star lineup of musicians made a difference. Nile Rodgers, the guitarist and songwriter for Chic, wrote the underlying riff and plays guitar. Mr. Williams sang the lead and wrote the lyrics. The rhythm section consists of Omar Hakim, an acclaimed jazz drummer who has worked with Madonna and Sting, and the bassist Nathan East, who has recorded with Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton and Phil Collins. Mr. Bangalter and Mr. de Homem-Christo, who declined to be interviewed for this article, have told reporters that they started working on the album in 2008. The aim was to depart from their usual way of operating and recapture what they call the "golden age" of recording in the late 1970s. They abandoned playing the parts themselves and relying heavily on drum machines, computerized loops and samples of disco and rock records. Instead they recruited master studio musicians with the technique to play a syncopated groove in near-perfect time for five or 10 minutes. "Get Lucky" took more than 18 months to write. The duo came up with the chord progression and organ part early on, then asked Mr. Hakim and Mr. East to record a rhythm track. Mr. Rodgers laid down the guitar tracks at the Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan, where he recorded his first Chic single in the 1970s. He jammed over the tracks, playing his trademark chord inversions and chicken-scratch rhythms until the riff emerged. Months later, Mr. Williams traveled to Paris and composed the melody line and lyrics in the duo's studio there. "It was so spontaneous and instant," Mr. de Christo-Homem told the BBC. It was just a fast sparkle of magic, and he channeled to some of the best R&B he had been listening to. Mr. Williams said in a later online interview he had been so jet-lagged that he did not remember the session well. The marketing for the song was old-school as well. Columbia Records avoided waging a modern Internet campaign, opting instead for billboards with just the band's robot-helmet logo in Los Angeles and other cities. Then came 15-second spots on "Saturday Night Live" with snippets of "Get Lucky" to whet the public's appetite, and finally a videotaped promotion at the Coachella music festival in which Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Williams appeared with Daft Punk. "We were trying to reveal as little as possible," said Scott Greer, Columbia's vice president for marketing. The thing that has enhanced the brand is the scarcity, the absence of any information, and then supplying it here and there. Many teenagers only know Daft Punk through "Tron," the duo's 2010 album, or through Kanye West, who sampled one of its earlier songs for his 2006 hit "Stronger." But what many seem to be responding to in "Get Lucky" is what lies at the heart of many disco hits: an upbeat message and danceable beat. Theoren Hyland, 15, a self-described science "nerd" at the School of the Future who likes rock bands like Coldplay, said he only became interested in Daft Punk this year, when friends showed him a YouTube video with sci-fi anime characters for the song "One More Time." Then he heard "Get Lucky" at a rehearsal for the "Guys and Dolls" production at school and became a convert. "It's catchy," he said. It has a good vibe. But it's also the theme, what it's about: partying and celebration. An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly, in one instance, to Daft Punk as Daft Puck.