Lights Bokan, formerly known as Valerie Poxleitner, is a Canadian-born artist, whose music genre can only be explained as “indie-pop”. Though she’s known more in her native land than she is in the United States, she has a pretty decent following in both countries.

However, what makes Lights different from any other artist out there isn’t her humble beginnings—becoming a solo artist at a young age and creating music, just as most did. No, what makes this young artist different from the rest goes beyond her sound… it’s the message she sends to her fans. Lights’s music is indie-pop, and so upbeat, that there’s no way for someone to ever feel sad when listening to one of her songs. Her songs range from leaving a bad place, and going to a better one, to going back to your child-like innocence and discovering truly what it means to be a musician. Hit songs such as “Up We Go” and “Running With The Boys” may not hit number one charts, but the meaning behind them goes far beyond the opinion of any billboard could even fathom.

She’s also been known to tour with unknown artists, to give them a chance to get their names out there. Examples of such would be X-Ambassadors, and of recently, did a collaboration with Steven James. She not only allows them to open for her, or do collaborations with them, but she truly loves their sound and expresses her love for their latest albums.

Aside from her music being extremely unique and original, Lights’s interviews are something to marvel at. For example, just this last year, she expressed her concern with being a musician, and going through writer’s block and wanting to come up with an album that did better than the last, as any artist would want. The catch? Since Lights isn’t an artist who particularly cares about number one hits, her biggest concern was creating an album that her fans would enjoy, and truly wanted to go back to what drove her to want to create music in the first place. The interview continued with her telling a story of how in order to rekindle that love, she traveled out to New Mexico and worked on the album out of a small town in New Mexico, using solar powered energy…. In short, she’s an artist who’s human, and expresses that in her interviews—between video games, her favorite Final Fantasy character, or where she draws her inspiration.

Finally, Lights is a woman every young girl or boy can look up to.

She simply wants the best for her fans, young and old, to be strong and be their own person, no matter where it takes them. Her music is for any age, any gender… She is Lights.