Pretty Lights

Derek Vincent Smith, better known as Pretty Lights, is an American electronic music artist, and also the owner of the label Pretty Lights Music which has under it artists of similar genre.
Smith's music relies heavily on digital sampling and crosses many genres, forming a combination of "glitchy hip-hop beats, buzzing synth lines, and vintage funk and soul samples, sometimes grime." Pretty Lights' sound is generated by synthesizing samples and organic beats using the Novation X-Station, monome and the Akai MPD32. Smith uses these digital controllers to program the music production software Ableton Live 8. Due to the sample-based nature of his music, Smith releases all his music for free with a recommended donation, in an attempt to avoid having to clear samples. When performing live, Smith uses two Macbook Pros running Ableton Live 8 and two Akai MPD32s. Smith usually considers his music as " Electro Hip-Hop Soul", a mix between elements of electronic based music, and beats from hip-hop and soul music, along with vocals. - Wikipedia