Ellise's 'PRETTY EVIL DELUXE' is a Seductively Sinister Elegy for Lethal Love: Album Review
- Abby Anderson
- Jun 12
- 2 min read
Stand-out tracks: "KILL4ME" "LOSER"
Our favorites: 'KEROSENE" "END ALL BE ALL"
Release date: June 13, 2025
For fans of: Sabrina Carpenter, Melanie Martinez, Madison Beer
Every good twisted fantasy is never finished without an equally good, twisted happy ending. Since Ellise laid to rest the original tale of PRETTY EVIL earlier this year, the dark-pop superstar has only been waiting to strike with her return, getting sharper, wittier, and more lethal from the shadows.
PRETTY EVIL DELUXE, released June 13, is perfectly crafted to twist the knife in Ellise's stories of angelic love and demonic heartbreak. The deluxe edition of the album is everything from luscious to searing, with the additions of seraphic “END ALL BE ALL,” disparaging “LOSER,” seductive “KILL4ME,” and scorching “KEROSENE.” Ellise is as clever as she is bewitching, sprinkling the new releases that make up PRETTY EVIL DELUXE throughout the original tracklisting to embed them within the world of PRETTY EVIL, rather than making them an afterthought.
Dripping in sugary sweetness, "END ALL BE ALL" sees Ellise leaning towards the angel on her shoulder. Falling in the original tracklisting in the heart-eyed run of songs between "committed for life" and "cherry on top," "END ALL BE ALL" sees Ellise in a moment of believing in love - but not without her darkly bewitching signature. Dancing over one of the poppiest instrumentals of the project, Ellise's soprano sings, "I'd end it all to be your all / I don't wanna stay if you're gone," before spiraling back into a ghostly, gothic chorus to pull the track's sonic back into the sphere of PRETTY EVIL. But Ellise doesn't stay doe-eyed for long, demolishing her lover in a Sabrina Carpenter-esque ode to foolish heartbreakers in "LOSER." Stripped back to an electric guitar and layers of Ellise's angelic voice singing the most deliriously formidable of quips (see: "I was doing your laundry while you're getting head on some twenty-year-old's balcony"), Ellise proves that she can rise from the ashes no matter how deeply she's been burned.
Released ahead of the rest of the deluxe tracks, "KILL4ME" is everything there is to love about Ellise. Boasting a drippingly delicious bassline and addictively masochistic lyrics, Ellise uses this moment in the story of PRETTY EVIL to beg for the reprieve of heartbreak. The back half of PRETTY EVIL DELUXE is a dazzlingly destructive dose of emotional whiplash, and "KILL4ME" and "KEROSENE" only deepen the cut. Perhaps the most exquisitely vindictive and sonically triumphant of the entire PRETTY EVIL project, "KEROSENE" is as hell-fiery as the concept it's named for. Ringing out with heart rate-altering bells, striking matches, and hazy, distorted synths that are innately scorching, Ellise's voice unfurls through the smoke singing, "I'll cover you in kerosene / I'll light you up them leave/ Ecstasy / But I'm not yours to keep."
Suspended between the raw pulse of a bleeding heart and the smoldering ruins of the fires she’s lit beneath failed loves, PRETTY EVIL DELUXE marks the end of this chapter for Ellise with a beautifully sinister alchemy of beauty and ruin.
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