Fort Collins, CO · electro-soul · downtempo

Pretty Lights

1 upcoming festival

Sample-built electro-soul — dusty vinyl crackle and horn stabs stretched over subwoofer-scale low end, the genre's founding document still touring.

Pretty Lights is the project of Derek Vincent Smith, who began releasing music from Fort Collins, Colorado in the mid-2000s. The music is built largely from sampled sources — soul and funk records, horn lines, vocal fragments — layered over hip-hop drum programming and heavy low end, a template that helped shape the American electronic scene of the following decade.

Smith distributed his early albums as free downloads, an approach that spread the music widely outside conventional retail. Live shows have typically been staged with an elaborate lighting and visual production, and Smith has at times performed alongside live musicians rather than working alone.

electro-souldowntempo