tristan prettyman: “If someone were to say to me, ‘Tell me about yourself,’ I would just hand them a copy of Hello and say, “Here, this is everything you need to know,’” says singer/songwriter and guitarist Tristan Prettyman. Indeed, Hello, Prettyman’s second album, which will be released by Virgin Records on April 15, 2008, is an appealing portrait of this freewheeling San Diego, CA, native as she narrates stories about her life, loves, and heartbreaks in her seductive, smoky alto. With laid-back melodies springing from finger-picked acoustic guitar, plaintive pedal-steel guitar, Wurlitzer, Hammond organ, and strings, Hello explores Prettyman’s love of country-blues and folk from the ’60s and ’70s, on songs like the first single “Madly” “Echo,” and “Just A Little Bit.” Recorded over six weeks in London with British producers and songwriters Martin Terefe (KT Tunstall) and Sacha Skarbek (James Blunt, Tunstall), Hello delivers on the promise Prettyman raised with her 2005 Virgin Records debut twentythree — a critically well-received collection of “bright, breezy ditties about romantic bliss” as People magazine put it in its review. Now with Hello, Prettyman says she’s “stepped it up a notch,” chalking up the artistic leap between twentythree and Hello to the confidence that comes from the passage of time. “I have grown so much in the last two years,” she says, “and I think the album definitely reflects that. It's more grown-up, and it just feels legit. I’ve never been more excited about anything in my life as I am with this record. It is so me.”