Lauv

Based in New York, singer and songwriter Ari Leff, who records under the name Lauv, crafts pop rooted in electronic textures and shaped by R&B sensibilities, conveying a sense of yearning. He considers himself above all a narrator, and alongside his roles as producer and instrumentalist he has become recognized for indelible songs that examine heartbreak, solitude, and the tangled process of coming of age. Worldwide success arrived in 2017 with the hit single “I Like Me Better,” later placed on I Met You When I Was 18, the playlist that gathered his earliest tracks. Lauv’s first proper studio album, the 2020 release How I’m Feeling, brought in Troye Sivan, BTS, and Alessia Cara among its guests and reached the Top 20 across multiple territories. His second full-length, 2022’s All 4 Nothing, was propelled by the single “26” and climbed to number nine on the Top Independent Albums chart. The song “Steal the Show” appeared in 2023 on the soundtrack for the Disney/Pixar feature Elemental, after which he issued further singles such as “Potential” and “First Heartbreak” over the following year.

Drawn to music early, the San Francisco native studied piano and viola in childhood, then took up guitar near the age of eleven. Throughout high school he performed with various bands and explored jazz before turning toward electronic production. While enrolled at NYU as a music technology student in 2014, a painful breakup prompted him to focus intensely on songwriting and recording. From those sessions emerged “The Other,” co-written with songwriter and instrumentalist Michael Matosic. Issued under the stage name Lauv—an adaptation of the Latvian word “lauve,” meaning lion—the track attracted widespread blog attention, went viral, and reached number three on the Hype Machine aggregator. In 2015 he released his debut EP, Lost in the Light, which included “The Other.”

Additional tracks followed, among them “Reforget” in 2015 and “Question” featuring Travis Mills in 2016. Lauv launched his own Late Nights, Deep Talks tour in 2017, unveiled the official video for “The Other,” and issued a series of remixes. The single “I Like Me Better,” released that May, became a major international breakthrough and appeared on his self-titled second EP that October. It was also included on the 2018 playlist compilation I Met You When I Was 18 alongside the singles “Paranoid” and “Bracelet.” The track “Drugs and the Internet,” together with the collaborations “I’m So Tired…” with Troye Sivan and “Fuck, I’m Lonely” with Anne-Marie, marked his transition into 2019. Both songs found a home on the debut studio album How I’m Feeling in 2020, which further featured LANY, Sofia Reyes, BTS, and Alessia Cara. The project entered the Billboard 200 at number 16 and reached number nine in the U.K.; an EP titled Without You followed soon afterward.

Lauv opened 2021 on December 31 with the uplifting single “2021” and later appeared on DallasK’s “Try Again.” In January 2022 he confirmed that his second album was finished and released the track “26.” All 4 Nothing arrived that August, charting inside the Billboard 200’s Top 100 and peaking at number nine on the Top Independent Albums tally. In 2023 he contributed “Steal the Show” to the Elemental soundtrack and continued issuing singles, among them “Love U Like That” and the Bella Poarch collaboration “Crush.” Throughout 2024 he maintained a steady flow of releases, including the solo offerings “Potential” and the ballad “First Heartbreak” as well as the three-way track “Cozy” recorded with Jeremy Zucker and Alexander 23.