Born and raised in North County San Diego, Tristan never had plans of a music career. Her first three recordings, 2003’s The Love EP, 2005’s breezy twenty-three and 2008’s Hello, Tristan Prettyman parlayed her smoky alto voice and laid-back surfer-girl-from-San-Diego charm into an eight-year career studded with highlights that included Hello’s No. 2 position on the iTunes Digital Albums chart and headlining tours across the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Instead of capitalizing on the attention and immediately making plans to record a third album after wrapping two years of touring in support of Hello, Prettyman took an extended break during which she traveled the globe, had surgery to remove polyps on her vocal cords, got engaged to her long-term boyfriend, dealt with the pain of his ending the engagement, and eventually questioned whether she even wanted to be a musician at all. When mixing on Cedar + Gold wrapped, Prettyman went back to her hotel room and burst into tears. “I couldn’t believe it was done,” she says. “I got everything out. It no longer lived in me. It felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I finally felt free.” Cedar + Gold (whose title refers to both the cedar walls and ceilings in the home where she recovered from her heartbreak and the gold she spun from her situation in the songs) is an album that manages to be both deeply personal, but highly relatable to anyone who’s had the ground collapse under them and fought their way back to healing. Her most recent albums "Back To Home" and "Letting Go" are a return to soft sounds and laid back feels perfect for long drives and adventures.