Listen to “Pretty,” the First Song From Puma Blue’s New Album

Holy Waters is due out in September.

Puma Blue is the alias of Jacob Allen, a London-born artist who now lives in Atlanta. For the past half decade or so he has created a lane of jazz-inflected late night comfort music. Across early EPs Swum Baby and 2018’s Blood Loss, his music has been a nook to clamber into, shutting the rest of the world out as you enter.

Today Allen has announced details of a new Puma Blue album. Holy Waters will be released on September 1 via Blue Flowers. The first track from the album, “Pretty,” comes from a deeply vulnerable place as he sings about the unique anxiety that being accepted for who you are can bring. The feeling of distorted ideas about your own image running so deep that you begin to question anyone who finds you attractive is at the heart of the song, which warps between beautiful ambience and harsher textures to reflect that emotional journey.

Speaking via email, Allen told the FADER: “‘Pretty’ is about feeling ugly. So ugly that sometimes you can’t believe the person who loves you sees you how they do. We were playing with beauty and ugliness when producing it, the live studio performance already felt so sweet and delicate, it needed something uglier and haunting so I howled these notes in the bridge and we fed my voice through a synth that made me sound like a swarm of bees.”

On the subject of the video, which nods to Wim Wenders’ 1987 classic Wings of Desire, Allen adds: “I wanted to capture how it feels to look in a mirror and feel dissonance with what you see. I obscured myself for much of the video, shot on film and directed by Angela Ricciardi, I wanted to hide and sing from the shadows. But I walk around New York City with these angel wings because the lyrics are ‘You make me feel so pretty,’ this idea that I am perceived as beautiful by someone else despite how I see myself. At the end, I come home to this lifeless figure, a nothing. The idea that even though you can be loved by someone you can still be haunted by dysmorphia to some extent. This song is an attempt to challenge that, to honour that admiration from the one who sees me as beautiful.”

Holy Waters is the follow up to 2021 album In Praise Of Shadows. In between making the new record, Allen has worked with British rapper Loyle Carner on his latest album Hugo, as well as opening for Arlo Parks. In addition to the new album, today also brings news of a Puma Blue headline U.K. and European tour. See below for venue and date details.

Puma Blue 2023 tour dates

May 4 – Washington, DC – Union Stage
May 5 – Durham, NC – Motorco Music Hall
May 6 – Nashville, TN – The Basement East
May 7 – Atlanta, GA – Shaky Knees Festival
May 9 – New Orleans, LA – Toulouse Theatre
May 11 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall
May 12 – Austin, TX – Parish
May 13 – Dallas, TX – Deep Ellum Arts Co

September 9 – Paris, La Maroquinerie
September 12 – Amsterdam, Bitterzoet
September 13 – Brussels, Botanique Orangerie
September 15 – Copenhagen, Vega
September 16 – Stockholm, Nalen
September 18 – Berlin, Silent Green
September 19 – Koln, Bumann & Sohn
September 20 – Hamburg, Reeperbahn
September 25 – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
September 26 – Manchester, Canvas
September 27 – Bristol, Thekla
September 28 – London, KOKO
September 30 – Dublin, The Button Factory
October 2 – Glasgow, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut
October 3 – Birmingham, Hare & Hounds