After several months of writing and recording, Smith relocated to New Orleans in mid-2014. Over the following two years, Smith recorded music with local musicians and played sporadic shows with the Analog Future Band. In 2015 Pretty Lights headlined the Suwannee Hulaween music festival the last weekend of October. Following Analog Future's final show at New Orleans’ Buku Music + Art Project in March 2016, Smith soon formed the new band Pretty Lights Live. The new band features Smith, drummer Alvin Ford Jr., keyboardist Brian Coogan, keyboardist Borahm Lee, and turntablist Chris Karns. On May 31, 2016, Smith announced that the band would embark on a five-stop "Episodic Festival" U.S. tour with two-day stops in Gilford, NH, Morrison, CO, Telluride, CO, Chicago, IL, and Nashville, TN. Shortly after, Coogan left the band and was replaced by Brandon Butler. In late 2016, Smith revealed that he was working on his first new album in four years, with a tentative release date set for April 2017. Pretty Lights Live is slated to play at several major U.S. music festivals in 2017, including Summer Camp Music Festival in May and Camp Bisco in July. The band then performed in Detroit, MI, Minneapolis, MN, and Philadelphia, PA, over the New Year's holiday period. "[T]he only shows of the summer, [and] possibly all" of 2018 took place at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on August 10 and 11, celebrating the tenth consecutive year of Pretty Lights performing there. Smith has also put on the two night annual event known as BassLights from 2012 through 2015. Smith and crew pairs with Bassnectar to bring the yearly event to the Hampton Coliseum on the weekend between Christmas and New Years. The pair brought along with them major supporting acts such as Big Gigantic, Gramatik, GRiZ and A-Trak in 2012. 2013 featured yet again Big Gigantic along with Pretty Lights Music godfather Michal Menert, Datsik (musician) and Keys N Krates. 2013 also brought along the Analog Future Band who performed both nights alongside Pretty Lights adding a fresh new take on his music performing it with live instrumentation. 2014 kept the tradition of major opening acts going strong with the return of Beats Antique who had been a PrettyNectar Alumni from when they played in 2011 in Alpharetta, GA, Exmag, Chromeo (dj set) and Elliot Lipp.