Black Viiolet Slips Into Velvet Jazz-Noir Shadows, Exploring Love And Distance On New LP Dark Blue
Seattle-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Nicole Laurenne returns as Black Viiolet with ,Dark Blue a dusky, jazz-soaked full-length arriving February 13 on Adrenalin Fix Music. The record leans into smoky lounge, neo-soul, and trip-hop textures, pulling from the lineage of Portishead, Amy Winehouse, and Nina Simone while carving a mood entirely her own. Fans who know Nicole from the high-voltage world of The Darts will recognize the same instinct and intensity here, but Dark Blue moves in a different direction, built from late-night keys, brass shadows, and a songwriter’s eye for detail. Written mostly in the van while touring her debut, the album folds the chaos of the road into something intimate and cinematic. Nicole built it the way she lives her life, hands on every instrument she can reach, ears tuned to every corner of the room, pulling color and rhythm from whatever city happens to be outside the window that night. Dark Blue feels like a late-hour confession set to brushed drums, muted brass, and the haze of a piano that has seen more lives than most people.
At its core, the album is about distance. Touring nonstop while navigating a new long-distance relationship left Nicole in a constant push and pull between hope and heaviness.
“When you’re doing what you love but the person you love is always far away, you get stretched thin,” she says.
Some songs lean toward that hopeful spark, like “Just Met” and “Not Too Bad,” little flashes of joy written between load-ins and late-night drives. Others drift toward the melancholy, like “Dark Blue,” “Bye,” and “No Fool Like Me,” tracing the emotional lag that creeps in when the miles stack up. The title track holds the center of that weight. Nicole describes the feeling behind it as “a deep, rich, velvety shade… but a little dark, and a little blue.” That tone carries through everything, right down to the brass parts that sigh instead of shout and the rhythms that move like someone pacing at three in the morning.
Collecting the touring band in Europe changed the whole feel. Recording between show runs gave the music a confident sway, the kind of tightness you only earn after months crammed together backstage. Gregg Ziemba’s drumming keeps the pulse warm and loose, Evan Strauss’ electric double bass anchors the haze, and a small brass section featuring Basile Conand, Paul Cadier, and Jean-Gatien Pasquier curls around Nicole’s arrangements like cigarette smoke. At Studio Black Box in the Loire Valley in France, producer Peter Deimel put Nicole in front of a 1930s Berlin piano he rescued and restored. She heard one note and immediately added a piano solo to the outro of “Dark Blue,” the whole thing blooming into a bruised, beautiful moment that sounds like the room itself inhaling. Additional recording with guest artists took place in home studios across the United States, Germany, and England, with mixing by Max Statham and Nima Abazzi at Ruby Room in Seattle and mastering by Stéphane Teynie in France.
Dark Blue also marks the first time Nicole has ever recorded “Why Don’t You Do Right,” the jazz standard she has played on every stray piano in every club, hotel, and hallway she has passed through for years. Jessica Rabbit singing it in Who Framed Roger Rabbit was the reason Black Viiolet existed in the first place, but she never put it to tape until now. It sits here like a quiet origin story, smoky and unhurried, carrying decades of her own history with it. Elsewhere, the album opens up to a few unexpected guests. Jason DeVore of Authority Zero lifts “Just Met,” Tom Hagerman of DeVotchKa threads heart-splitting strings through “Whiskey Eyes,” and Blag Dahlia reshapes “One” into a crooked lounge bonus cut with his own arrangement and vocals. It is a small constellation of friends orbiting Nicole’s world, each one adding a different shade to the palette.
Even though Nicole calls Seattle home now, Dark Blue carries the long arc of a career shaped in Phoenix, where her previous bands landed New Times cover stories and regular rotation on KWSS. Black Viiolet’s debut found support across KNKX, KFJC, KDRT, and a spread of community and college stations, along with feature attention from Persona in France and Popular 1 in Spain. Radio voices like Abe Beeson and Kareem Kandi from KNKX have been steady champions, and the broader network Nicole built with The Darts continues to open doors as Black Viiolet settles into a more nocturnal and jazz-rooted lane. Nicole’s range as a musician has always cut across boundaries. Dark Blue is the clearest argument yet that she is not just a frontwoman from the garage-punk world but a serious composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist with a voice entirely her own.
Dark Blue sits in that liminal space where jazz, noir pop, and trip-hop overlap, but the real engine is Nicole. Her writing, her arranging, her ability to take the tension of long months on the road and turn it into something soft, bruised, and unmistakably hers. It is a record full of late-night light, small scars, little mercies, and the quiet ache of wanting someone who is always a few thousand miles away. Black Viiolet releases Dark Blue on February 13, 2026, a deep, rich shade you can fall into and one of her most complete statements yet.