Prettier Now - Beaming
Sometimes the heaviest songs are not necessarily those concerned with anger, but those in which the person writing them has stopped looking for somebody else to blame. On Beaming, released on September 22, 2026, Prettier Now surround that uncomfortable moment of self-recognition with swirling guitars, grunge weight and the increasingly expansive mixture of indie rock, post-punk and shoegaze that has come to define the project.
The single also announces an important new chapter for Prettier Now, introducing their forthcoming second album, Miracle Charm. Following the 2024 debut Perfect Crush, the new record finds the band once again working with producer Noah Sullivan at Little Hollywood studio in Howell, New Jersey, but Beaming immediately suggests that the collaboration has moved towards something heavier and more powerful.
Now approaching their sixth year, Prettier Now continues to function around Christian Monte, the Manhattan-via-Jersey Shore songwriter at the centre of a changing cast of musicians. That revolving structure has allowed the project to evolve without becoming tied permanently to one configuration, while Monte's songwriting provides the continuity connecting its different stages.
On Beaming, that continuity becomes particularly personal. Monte describes the song as emerging from the recognition that his own distorted priorities and inability to consistently be present helped destroy a relationship before it had really been given the opportunity to develop. Rather than constructing the familiar narrative of somebody recovering from another person's betrayal, the song turns the examination inward.
There is a particular kind of regret attached to relationships that fail before they properly begin. When something has existed for years, there is at least a history against which its ending can be understood. When the relationship disappears while still containing possibilities, much of the grief concerns what might have happened rather than what actually did.
Beaming places that emotional uncertainty inside music that sounds considerably more confident.
The track is anchored by a tight rhythm section while layers of guitars swirl around it, bringing together the physical weight of grunge and the blurred atmosphere of shoegaze. The guitars create density without reducing the song to an indistinct wall of sound, while Monte's rising vocals provide a melodic centre capable of pushing through the surrounding distortion.
That contrast is one of the song's strengths. The subject is failure, regret and the gradual accumulation of mistakes, yet the performance itself feels forceful rather than defeated. Prettier Now do not translate vulnerability into musical fragility. Instead, the emotional weight of the lyrics seems to demand a correspondingly substantial sound.
This is also where the grunge and shoegaze elements work particularly well together. Grunge gives Beaming its muscular guitar presence, while shoegaze allows those guitars to expand beyond conventional riffs and become part of the atmosphere. The post-punk element is less about obvious stylistic imitation than the sense of tension maintained by the rhythm section underneath those increasingly dense layers.
The result feels heavier without abandoning melody.
That development appears significant in relation to Miracle Charm. If Perfect Crush established the foundations of Prettier Now's sound, Beaming suggests that the second album will amplify them rather than simply repeat them. The guitars feel larger, the rhythm section more forceful and the emotional perspective less protected.
The return of Noah Sullivan as producer provides continuity between the records, but continuity does not necessarily mean repetition. Instead, Beaming sounds like the work of a project becoming more comfortable with allowing its melodic instincts and heavier tendencies to occupy the same space.
There is also something appropriate about Prettier Now becoming heavier as Monte's writing becomes more introspective. Approaching six years into the project inevitably creates its own perspective, and the passing of time appears important to the song. Regrets accumulate differently when they are no longer isolated mistakes but begin to resemble patterns.
That recognition gives Beaming more depth than a straightforward relationship song. Its emotional centre lies not simply in losing somebody but in understanding how one's own behaviour contributed to the loss. The distinction is uncomfortable because recognising a pattern also means accepting that things might have been different.
Prettier Now turn that discomfort into momentum.
As the first glimpse of Miracle Charm, Beaming therefore performs two jobs particularly effectively. It reconnects the band with the melodic and atmospheric qualities already associated with Prettier Now while signalling a noticeably heavier direction for what comes next.
Most importantly, the increased weight does not feel decorative. The grunge hooks, shoegaze textures, ascending vocals and tightly controlled rhythm section give physical form to a song concerned with regret and self-examination. The music sounds enormous because the realisation at its centre feels enormous too.
If Perfect Crush introduced Prettier Now's world, Beaming suggests that Miracle Charm may explore what happens when that world becomes louder, heavier and considerably less willing to hide its bruises.
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