Pretty Idea

Since her debut release, 2017’s <i>3:33am</i>, 31-year-old singer-songwriter Amber Mark has explored heady themes (grief, acceptance, astrophysics) through a wide range of dreamy, soulful sounds—R&B, funk, pop, bossa nova, plus a quarantine series covering everything from Nirvana to Sisqó. Mark’s second studio album, <i>Pretty Idea</i>, is just as sonically free-wheeling, though the focus here is love: new love, past love, self-love. Her head’s in the clouds on sultry neo-soul numbers like “Sweet Serotonin”, which Mark debuted live in London, opening for Sabrina Carpenter in July 2025. On “By the End of the Night”, she’s drenched in glitter for a night out with her friends, having forgotten all about a bad-news ex: “Crazy how it used to be so hard/To get over a mess like you.” (Both songs were co-produced by Julian Bunetta, who’s worked with pop It girls like Carpenter and Gracie Abrams.) Elsewhere, Mark’s tastes are as unbridled as ever, interpolating an USHER and Alicia Keys classic (“My Boo”) on “Too Much”, recruiting Anderson .Paak for the buoyant “Don’t Remind Me”, and melding alt-country with neo-soul on the wistful “Cherry Reds”.