DEV

DEV is a name used by several artists. One of them is Devin Star Tailes, an American recording artist from Tracy, California, who grows up in Manteca. She is of Mexican and Portuguese descent, and is the daughter of Lisa, a real estate agent, and Riki Tailes, a painting contractor. She has two younger sisters, Sierra Sol and Maezee Lua. She begins swimming at the age of four and takes part in the U.S. Olympic development programme. She later attends Sierra High School, where she sings in a choir and plays in a band, and then studies English and art history at San Joaquin Delta College before leaving college to pursue music.

Tailes is discovered after recording an Amy Winehouse cover on her MacBook and posting it on MySpace. A friend uploads the track, and The Cataracs notice it and make contact. She moves to Los Angeles in 2009 to make music with The Cataracs, and her song “2night” later gains radio play, MTVu exposure and chart activity on the Billboard Hot Dance Airplay chart. Her song “Booty Bounce” is sampled in Far East Movement’s “Like a G6”, which reaches number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and sells more than two million downloads in the United States.

She signs to Universal Republic in 2010 and releases her first official single, “Bass Down Low”, followed by “In the Dark”, which reaches number 11 in the US and also performs well in parts of Europe and Brazil. Her debut album, The Night the Sun Came Up, is released in the UK and Ireland, Australia, Brazil and the US across 2011 and 2012, and reaches number 61 in the US. Her vocal style is often described as “sing-talk”, and her work is associated with electro-crunk, electropop and electro hop. Her sound is also linked to hip hop, with an emphasis on pop music built around rap roots, and it is compared with artists such as Ke$ha, Uffie, Peaches and Yelle.

There is also a 2010s psy-trance project using the name DEV, alongside an OC remixer who works with video game music, an OC creator known for breakcore-style music and the alias 808sndmindbreak, and a Thai Vtuber singer from Algorhythm Project.