There’s something paradoxically honest about an album called ‘Dark Blue’ by Black Viiolet coming out on Valentine’s Day. Nicole Laurenn seems to remind us that love isn’t just pink postcards it’s also the bruises left by distance, and the jazz playing at three in the morning when you’re alone in a hotel room and the person you love is an ocean away.

‘Dark Blue’ shows that melancholy can have a velvet touch. Yes, it’s about distance, touring, and love from afar but not in the kind of way that makes you want to cry. It moves. Sometimes distance makes the music deeper because you pour into it everything you can’t say through a phone screen at 2 a.m. across time zones. Just listen and enjoy. A perfect sound for late nights, a glass of something strong, and that mood of “I’ll just sit here and listen.”