Gaming geeks rejoice: we just found your dream girl. She sings, plays keytar, draws comics, lives for sci-fi culture, and get this: she’s got a World of Warcraft tattoo stamped on her petite frame. Her name (in the real world) is LIGHTS and to say this synth-pop sensation from Hogtown is cute would be a gross understatement.

Small enough to fit in your back pocket, this adorable fantasy freak lives up to her name with an irresistibly sunny disposition. Of course, the instantly likable 22-year-old assures us that she’s not always chipper. “Normal life” brings her down, too.

“That’s definitely for sure,” says the enthusiastic LIGHTS (born Valerie Poxleitner), who recently sat down with the Straight for a one-on-one at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts. “Like everybody, you get nights where you feel completely depressed. You start thinking about all the bad things and think about the glass half empty—instead of half full. There’s no explanation for it. But I’m thankful for those times because I wouldn’t have written ”˜Saviour’ and ”˜The Last Thing on Your Mind’—those songs came from really dark moments.”

Musically, that may not be immediately apparent, especially in the case of “Saviour”. This candy-coated piece of lollipop sweetness—which kicks off her debut album, The Listening—soars with a feel-good, childlike innocence. But lyrically, LIGHTS is clearly down in the dumps and looking for someone or something larger than life to lift her up from the depths of G-rated tween despair.

“I’m very into superhero culture and stuff like that, so I always think on very epic terms,” says LIGHTS. “So I’m just, like, picturing someone on top of a building with their leg up on the edge, you know? Being a saviour.”

Raised by missionaries who volunteered in the Philippines and Jamaica, LIGHTS was exposed to extreme poverty at an early age. She said it gave her an appreciation for making the most of what she has in life—and in the recording studio.

“We would just sit around in the dirt and have fun,” recalls LIGHTS of her former playmates. “It’s using what you have around you and I apply that a lot to what I do. If I can’t find the right sound [or] if I want something distorted like some crazy, raunchy synth sound, I’ll take a piano and then distort it to crap, so that I can achieve that sound. It’s about working with what you have around you and still being really happy with it.”

Which is probably why she has so much success making music in her bedroom with limited resources, a process she seems very proud of.

“The very last song on the record is a tribute to that concept,” she says. “It’s just me and the piano. The song’s called ”˜Pretend’ and it was recorded right under my bunk bed—yes, I sleep in a bunk bed because my studio’s under it.

“It’s like a loft bed,” she clarifies, adding with an infectious giggle, “I’m such a geek.”

LIGHTS plays the Commodore Ballroom on Saturday (November 7).