You say that you don’t love me,
but I am not going to say I am sorry
Berlin has long been a city of reinvention, a crucible for the displaced and the daring. Into this restless landscape steps Pretty Average, a band that defies its modest moniker. Frontwoman Candy, armed with a voice that sounds lived-in and unvarnished, leads a project that thrives on contradiction: immediate yet deliberate, raw yet articulate. Together with longtime collaborator Sergi, with whom she’s made music for over fifteen years, Pretty Average draws strength from endurance, experience, and the stubborn belief that imperfection is its own form of truth.
Their latest single, “Everybody’s Watching,” pierces through the glossy veneer of modern exhibitionism. “Everybody’s Watching points out the obsession we all have to behave differently in front of others, the pressure of being constantly exposed,” the band explains. “This behaviour is intensified because of social media and all the fake lives many people are showing in it. How this made up image of ourselves affects us in our real lives and integrates toxic behavior in our relationships because of it.” The song narrates “a break up of a couple that never loved each other although they always looked great in pictures,” they add. “Being exposed doesn’t bring you joy. Pretending to have it all—but we are all pretty average at the end.”
Musically, the track bristles with the tension between restraint and release as it channels the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed and Lydia Lunch. Candy’s voice cracks through distortion like a flare in fog, steady and human amid the mechanical churn of guitars. The sound feels born of the rehearsal room—air thick with feedback and persistence—yet sharpened by the band’s years spent absorbing Berlin’s underground pulse. There’s a palpable sense of motion, as if each note is pushing against the weight of constant surveillance itself.
Beneath the surface, the lyrics pulse with weariness and resolve. The song tells a lonely yet lucid story, rejecting performative heartbreak and the façade of perfection. It’s a quiet confrontation with the world’s demand to perform happiness, an act of rebellion through sincerity.
Directed by Doria de Burch, the accompanying video visualizes that sense of exposure with eerie precision. Shot in a shaky, almost voyeuristic style, it resembles unearthed surveillance footage—grainy, detached, and uncomfortably intimate. The band becomes both observer and observed, dissolving into the anonymous blur of city life as the lens tracks their movements like a security camera gone rogue (in other words, a smartphone). The footage mirrors the song’s critique of how constant observation corrodes authenticity. It’s performative, but a performance we’re pressured to consent to by the algorithm and TOS, where every unguarded moment becomes public property.
Watch the video for Everybody’s Watching below:
Pretty Average’s forthcoming album, The Highs and Lows of Being Pretty Average, recorded with Ghost Palace Records, expands upon this vision. “In the era of short cuts to achieve success in one’s artistic career,” the band says, “we present this compilation of long songs that disturb the methods of how music is commercialised today. A note on dying collective hedonism. We invite you to delve into our catchy yet dark, very extended love songs which each reflect a particular hanging moment in our lives and invite you to levitate in it.”
The record, they note, was “recorded with free spirit,” a deliberate counterpoint to the algorithmic slickness dominating the industry. It’s a work that celebrates human imperfection and rejects the notion that immediacy must come at the cost of depth. In a cultural moment obsessed with optimization, Pretty Average offers an antidote: patience, persistence, and unvarnished honesty.
Listen to Everybody’s Watching via Spotify below:
What Pretty Average offers is something rare: sincerity without sentimentality, rebellion without spectacle. In a city saturated with performance, their noise feels like honesty made electric.
Pretty Average will tour around Europe and Asia to promote The Highs and Lows of Being Pretty Average.
- October 25 — Hamburg, DE — Galerie 21 (with Garlands)
- November 7 — Berlin, DE — Obergeschoss Hell
- November 14 — Barcelona, ES
- November 15 — Valencia, ES — Ca Revolta
- December 1 — Berlin, DE — Neue Zukunft (supporting Blue Zero)
- May 1 — Vienna, AT — Das Lot (with Paloma 004)
- May 2 — Budapest, HU — Szimpa
- May 3 — Bratislava, SK — Venue TBA
- May 7 — Leipzig, DE — Noch Besser Leben (TBC)
- May 8 — Berlin, DE — Kulturhaus Insel (Album Release Show)
- May 9 — Siegen, DE — Beautiful Noise Festival
- May 10 — Bielefeld, DE — Venue TBA
- May 29 – June 8 — Japan Tour
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