Kid Dakota waste nothing. Each note and beat on So Pretty serves a purpose, and the same holds true for the words. Songwriter Darren Jackson can really write, and within each song are fully-realized stories and character sketches, drawn with both poetic abstractions and a fiction writer’s eye for subtle but telling details.Take these lines from the title track for example: “Nikki, oh Nikki, so young and so pretty, your dad doesn’t know what you are / Instead of ahabit you should have a hobby, like Barbie or bubble gum cards.” So Pretty, originally a 5-song EP, now features three additional tracks recorded awhile after the initial sessions. Still, it’s a cohesive whole. All of the tracks were recorded with Alex Oana at CityCabin in Minneapolis. “The engineering elements that define the Kid Dakota recorded sound are ungodly amounts of compression, EQ and distortion on the bass drum, and PZM mics in CityCabin's stairwell for drum ambience,” says Oana.The first session was captured on 16 tracks of ADAT with some API 212L mic pres and one 1272. “For the mix my outboard consisted of an Alesis 3630 compressor, a pair of Symetrix CL 150 compressors, a Boss compressor pedal, a Hot Tubes pedal, and a Peavey VMP2 tube mic pre,” says Oana. “The lack of plentiful, expensive gear turned out to work in our favor.” The second session was recorded on a Digi001, with songs fleshed out with as many as 64 tracks. “I mixed the second session in Pro Tools, but ran lots of things out and back in through a UA 610, an 1176, and a Peavey VMP2. I feel that the sound of the five original So Pretty tracks benefited from the dynamics and clarity of digital recording coupled with analog mixing and one bounce onto the tape. The three new cuts benefited from the creative possibilities in arrangement and mixing afforded by Pro Tools.