She Had Us At 'Hello'

Tristan Prettyman's Album Has Depth, but It Lacks Her Self-Proclaimed Attitude

Listen to Tristan Prettyman's appealing music. Read her MySpace page where she writes about such favorite things as bikinis, beach towels and seat heaters, acai fruit, avocados and artichokes. Then watch her "Madly" music video showcasing her über cute boyfriend, Jesse. Do all this and you might find yourself a little envious of the 26-year-old singer-songwriter who will perform with G. Love at Wolf Trap tonight.

"I'm on a bus for the first time, and I'm ecstatic. It's like the most exciting time of my whole life," Prettyman said from Iowa, where the seven-week tour opened.

Her story is pretty remarkable, if only for the relative ease with which Prettyman seems to have achieved a name for herself. Her new album, "Hello . . . X," was released in April and sold about 18,000 copies the first week. (Prettyman recorded the album in London, and the X is taken from the British youth who sign their e-mails and text messages with an X, meaning something along the lines of "cheers," she said.)

The narrative of Prettyman's life goes something like this: Inspired by Ani DiFranco, a surfing California girl and onetime Roxy Clothing model picks up the guitar at age 15. Friends at parties encourage her to play. She writes songs and realizes that music "can be a voice and an instrument." Yet, she doesn't take it all too seriously until her parents (yes, her parents) pull her aside one night after a gig to tell her, "You should play music and do what makes you happy. You can always go back to school. This might be your calling."

By age 23, she has an album, "Twentythree" with Virgin Records.

So, uh, yeah. Who wouldn't want to be her?

"I feel like in the beginning things happened easily," she said. She wrote music, played shows, got a manager, got a record deal. "Everything happened really smoothly, but I do feel like I put in a lot of hard work," she said.

It doesn't take much to picture Prettyman singing in coffee shops with such songs as "Story" and such lyrics as: "So you write the title, and I'll write the chapters. We can read a story of a love gone disaster. You write the moral, and I'll write the lesson, and we can read of love that kept us guessing."

Prettyman's music is about love (the slightly naive, confident kind). It's the product of a happy, hopeful, romantic, questioning young woman with very little darkness or edge to her. And how could she have an edge with an upbringing like hers?

"My favorite family memory is one Christmas morning, a couple years back, we all woke up and instead of opening presents, we went surfing," she writes on her MySpace page. She grew up north of San Diego, and her dad taught her to surf when she was in grade school. They still surf together today.

With her new album, which she calls "sexy" "bluesy" and "gritty," Prettyman said she is trying to "run from 'You're like the squeaky clean California girl.' There is a side of me with more of an attitude." And on "Hello . . . X," Prettyman tries to put it out there. "I kind of just let myself go a little and not worry about what everybody thinks," including her mom and dad, she said.

"Ooh, my. That song is very sexual," Prettyman said, mimicking her mom's reaction to the song "Handshake." "Who's that about?"