LIGHTS

Apart from being a pop singer of great originality and ambition, Canadian singer Lights (Valerie Anne Poxleitner) has also shown her off-kilter inventiveness by creating an alter-ego in her own comic book character called Enaia which she uses to write music in a more personalised and colourful fashion. All of it resulting in the shaping of one of Canada's most prized modern pop talents. Born in Timmins, Ontario (11 April 1987), she was the daughter of missionary parents and spent her childhood living in different parts of the world including the Philippines, Jamaica and different parts of Canada. At the age of 18, while living in Toronto, she legally changed her name to Lights, a nickname acquired as a shortening of her surname Poxleitner. At high school she sang and played guitar in a band called Shovel Face and quickly acquired an online following by publishing her music on MySpace, which resulted in a publishing deal and, with Luke McMaster, she began writing material for the TV series Instant Star. She had her first hit "Drive My Soul" in 2008, leading to major tours through Canada and the US, establishing a passionate fan base in the process. She also collaborated with Ten Second Epic on their hit "Every Day" and toured with the British band Keane and synth-pop artist Owl City. Her first album The Listening was released in 2009 followed by Siberia which got a Juno Award nomination for Pop Album of the Year. This was followed in 2014 by Little Machines but her career took another leap in 2017 with Skin & Earth, with which she designed a companion monthly comic book series with new music released to accompany each copy of the comic book. After many tours with Chase Atlantic and Young the Giant, and collaborations with Deadmau5 and Felix Cartal, Lights signed with Fueled by Ramen for the release of Skin&Earth Acoustic (2019). In 2020, she done a partnership with Bandcamp and recorded an instrumental album titled How to Sleep When You're on Fire, for Black Lives Matter. She then used the pseudonym of Lün for the EP Haha I Like It, before the return of Lights with the album PEP (2022), followed by the posthumous release Warehouse Summer with the late i_o, deceased in November 2020. A reimagined version, titled dEd, was issued in April 2023. In 2024, after a collaboration with Pvris on "The Blob", arrived the single "Damage", ahead of her sixth full-length A6 (2025), also featuring "Alive Again" and "Clingy".

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