Pretty Lights

Before Pretty Lights existed, Derek Vincent Smith played bass in an early band called The Freeze, formed in Fort Collins with childhood friend Michal Menert on guitar and keys and drummer Paul Brandt, drawing on old-school hip-hop, funk and punk. He attended Rocky Mountain High School and then the University of Colorado Boulder, leaving during his freshman year to focus on music full time.

Pretty Lights began in 2004 as a duo of Smith and Menert; Menert left after their first album and rejoined the project in 2023. The music is built largely from sampled soul and funk records, horn lines and vocal fragments, layered over hip-hop drum programming and heavy low end, a template producer Rick Rubin once credited with giving voice to a new generation of American electronic music.

Smith distributed his early albums as free downloads, an approach that spread the music widely outside conventional retail and built an audience well before typical release cycles.

Live shows have typically been staged with an elaborate lighting and visual production, including a cityscape-like array of LED towers designed with collaborator David Najarian. Smith has at times performed alongside live musicians, among them drummer Cory Eberhard, rather than working alone.