Biography

Derek Vincent Smith (born November 25, 1981) is an American electronic music artist who performs under the stage name Pretty Lights. He is also the proprietor of an associated music label, Pretty Lights Music.

History

Smith wrote and produced hip hop music while attending high school in Fort Collins, Colorado. After graduating from high school, he attended University of Colorado at Boulder, but dropped out during his freshman year to focus on his music instead. In 2007 and 2008, Smith began playing late nights for large acts such as STS9, The Disco Biscuits & Widespread Panic. In the summer of 2009, under the moniker Pretty Lights, Smith played at several major American music festivals, such as Bonnaroo, Rothbury, the Electric Daisy Carnival, Wakarusa, Camp Bisco, and the 10KLF. The following autumn, he went on a multi-city tour of the United States.

In 2010, Pretty Lights played at the 2010 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the Ultra Music Festival in Miami, the 2010 Marchone Music Productions Illumination Show in Nashville, the 2010 Evolve Festival in Nova Scotia, Movement 2010 (the Detroit Electronic Music Festival), the 2010 Starscape Festival, Camp Bisco, Nocturnal Festival at Apache Pass, Texas, the 2010 Electric Zoo at Randall’s Island in New York City, New York, the North Coast Music Festival in Chicago, Illinois, and the Outsidelands Festival in San Francisco, California. More recently, they headlined the Snow Ball in Avon, Colorado, along with Bassnectar and the Flaming Lips. In June 2011, Pretty Lights played a late-night set at Bonnaroo, where he debuted the song “I Know the Truth.” Smith also debuted his state-of-the-art light show in early 2011 involving LED towers made to look like a cityscape. In July 2011, he headlined at the Electric Forest in Rothbury, Michigan, at Camp Bisco in Mariaville, New York, and at the All Good Music Festival in Masontown, West Virginia, where he performed a special “once in a lifetime” track, a remix of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

Smith toured with drummer Cory Eberhard from August 2007 to June 2011. In 2010, Smith replaced Eberhard with Adam Deitch as drummer, debuting at Red Rocks on August 7, 2010. Smith stopped touring with a live drummer in 2011.

On January 25, 2011, Smith released two albums on his newly formed record label, Pretty Lights Music. The record label offers free downloads of all Pretty Lights albums, plus releases from PLM artists including Michal Menert, Break Science, Gramatik, Paul Basic, Eliot Lipp, and SuperVision. Pretty Lights continues to distribute music for free, and frequently appears at festivals across the world.

In 2012, Pretty Lights was featured in the musical documentary Re:GENERATION Music Project producing the track “Wayfaring Stranger,” featuring Country music stars LeAnn Rimes and Ralph Stanley for a collaborative effort mixing two genres, namely electronic and country.

Pretty Lights released a new full-length album titled A Color Map of the Sun on July 2, 2013. It is the first Pretty Lights album that does not rely on borrowed samples; Smith instead composed and recorded tracks with session musicians in studios in Brooklyn, New Orleans and Denver and pressed the recordings to vinyl, samples of which were then combined with modular synths and digital production methods.