Lauv
Lauv during his Cain’s Ballroom performance 10-28-2018 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
New York-based singer/songwriter Ari Leff, aka Lauv, makes yearning, electronic-based, R&B-influenced pop. He came to wide prominence in 2017 with his breakout hit "I Like Me Better."
Interested in music from a young age, the San Francisco-born Leff took piano and viola lessons as a child before picking up the guitar around age 11. During high school, he played in several bands and studied jazz before discovering electronic music production. However, it was while attending N.Y.U. as a music tech major in 2014 that a bad breakup found Leff on his own and digging deep into his writing and recording process. Out of this period came the song "The Other," co-written with songwriter/instrumentalist Michael Matosic. Released under Leff's stage name Lauv (inspired by the Latvian "lauve" or lion), the song went viral after gaining blog attention and peaked at number three on blog aggregator Hype Machine. In 2015 he returned with his debut EP, Lost in the Light, which featured "The Other."
