Looking back, I think it was my interest in garage rock that introduced me to the broader world of indie music quite a few years ago, so my ears definitely perked up when I heard “Midnight Creep,” the lead single from Halloween Love Songs back in January. The album comes out today, and I have to say it’s pretty awesome. Curious to learn more about the band, I reached out to lead singer Nicole Laurenne…

Who’s in the Darts, and how did the band come together?

The current lineup, which I put together for our entire 2025 year-long tour and is still going strong, consist of me on vocals and keys, Rebecca Davidson on guitar, Lindsay Scarey on bass, and Rikki Styxx on drums. The band started in 2016, formed from the ashes of my last band, The Love Me Nots. The bassist from that band and I wanted to start an all-girl band that could tour the world and basically just make great music and have fun. As the tours got bigger and bigger, and the demands on everyone got more intense over the years, I subbed in guitarists and drummers to make it all work. Finally in 2025 I revamped the whole lineup after things needed to change in order to do the massive touring ahead of us. I needed more tour consistency, not to mention the enthusiasm and road-warrior mentality that comes with bringing true touring professionals on board. These women are not only massive talents – Rikki was actually the original Darts drummer and left for a few years to tour with Death Valley Girls – but they are a joy to travel with and their hyper-focus on making a life out of touring and recording aligns perfectly with who I am at this point in life. Rikki does have some outside demands this coming year, as she is now a published textbook author and teacher, so we have the incredible Heather Thomas from Nashville stepping in for part of the year. I am so lucky to be living this life with these amazing people.

I love that 60s garage band sound! Who are some of your influences?

Me too!! I kind of fell into it by accident. I was a classical competitive pianist growing up, and then dabbled in jazz trios, cover rock bands, and then a kind of new-wave original band. I honestly didn’t know much about pop or rock or anything about garage, but then The Love Me Nots guitarist heard me and basically made it his mission to explain why my style of playing was perfect for garage rock. I listened to a ton of The Animals, The Seeds, Question Mark and The Mysterians, The Damned, The Stooges, even early Bob Seger (his early Detroit garage records are incredible). As I was drawn into the more modern version of garage, I loved The White Stripes (I even recorded with their Detroit producer, Jim Diamond, many times), The Makers, Jack White’s solo work, Dead Weather, Death Valley Girls, Plague Vendor, King Khan and The Shrines, April March. The Darts’ sound reaches farther than classic garage for sure, but this list is kind of where it started for me.

There’s also a retro-kitchy element to your music. What draws you to that vibe?

It’s fun, it’s timeless, and it speaks to all kinds of people all over the world. You can sing along to it, you can dance to it, you can not dance to it, and it takes us all back to a time and place where pop and rock were maybe a little more naive and innocent and raw. Who doesn’t love the theme from The Munsters ? It doesn’t take itself too seriously and it completely sets a mood that I think almost everyone everywhere can relate to instantly. Plus, I play the Farfisa organ and that automatically implies retro-kitsch.

And, of course, there’s a spooky vibe as well. What do you think makes garage rock and horror pair so well?

Garage takes the horror out of spooky, in my opinion. Someone recently coined us “spooky kittens” and I loved that description because I never want the goth-horror vibe to take itself too seriously with us. That is not what I set out to do in this band. Actually the first image I had for the band was Ann Margaret in the 60s coming home from her secretary job, throwing off her dress and running on stage in a black slip and bare feet to retro-rock hard. I have kind of darker, spookier lyrics naturally, and the vibe kind of slowly turned in that direction, and now I am embracing it fully with the new album Halloween Love Songs. Side A is definitely all that deliciously fun halloween kitsch garage that we love, but Side B is more about the rebellious, devil-be-damned side of Halloween with a darker and heavier feel. But I never want to lose that original image I had for the band.

Your new album Halloween Love Songs came out in January. Is the spirit of Halloween alive and well throughout the year?

Maybe not the pumpkins and costumes, but I do think the underlying spirit of laughing in the face of demons and devils, and celebrating the darker side of ourselves, is a big part of being human, no matter the time of year. We all have a dark side, and we should not be afraid to acknowledge it and think about it, and maybe even revel in it sometimes a little.

I understand that vocalist and keyboard player Nicole Laurenne used to be a judge. Is there any overlap between rock ’n’ roll and jurisprudence?

Well actually there was a literal overlap sometimes. Every now and then someone in the courtroom would as me to go off the record and approach the bench and whisper “Dude I saw your show last weekend, it ruled” or whatever. (And then I had to recuse myself from their case.) But yes there is more of a philosophical overlap then one would expect. As a criminal court judge, I listened to the problems and struggles and hopes and fears of thousands of people, every single day. I tried to improve their lives, whether it took punishment or rewards. I thought very hard about what makes people tick (I also have a degree in psychology) and I took the responsibility of the position very, very seriously. The punk rock world is strangely similar; we scream our feelings into microphones and everyone relates, we see each other struggle with substances and emotions and families, and the music seems to understand us and lifts us up somehow. Both experiences are very much about trying to understand and get through the most fundamental human situations, and that speaks to me deeply.

Your tour dates have you spending a decent amount of time in Hawaii and France. Does the band have connections to these locales?

Actually our Hawaii tour is only four shows! And it is our first time there. Usually we spend a lot of time in Europe, as our management is in Bordeaux, France, and Europe is like a dream for American musicians – the rewards are not only financial (something you don’t see much in the US) but also there is a general sense of welcome and value. For example, there are family dinners before the shows for all the crew and bands, there is lodging provided for the musicians, merch lines are long and the fans are just a joy to engage with, they are so excited about good music. We are trying to come back and play in the US more and more often in 2025 and 2026, though, so look for lots of dates coming up.

Then you have a ton of dates in the continental US. What do you like about taking your songs out on the road?

I write these songs in the van, in the kitchen, in hotels. They start as a kernel of a though, maybe a riff or a sentence. And to see them explode to life not only as a recording but as a live show, with people singing along, bouncing in rhythm to the beat, and then running to merch and hugging us and buying up all the records and shirts.. it is just the most heart-bursting best moment of my life, every single night. And my new bassist Lindsay is at merch with me every night now also, so we can share all of these incredible, priceless times together, which just makes the whole band experience even stronger.

I imagine Halloween night is big for the Darts, especially this year since it falls on a Saturday. I know it’s still early in the year, but do you have any plans for a big Halloween show?

We will be in Europe  on a sixty-plus-day tour and I am waiting to see what craziness our agent will put together. No matter where it is, we will for sure have the time of our lives with this record in hand.

What’s on the horizon for you?

So much. I will be on tour basically from March through December, hopscotching Darts tours with tours for my new solo project, Black Viiolet, which is also touring worldwide now. We hope to see Japan and Australia for the first time this year. We will do a month-long run with the band SERVICE, of whom we are huge fans. There are some festivals in the works, in the US and in Europe. We will go to the UK and hopefully Scandinavia also, a place I truly love. Lindsay and I have also been hard at work collaborating on writing the next Darts record, and I hope to get the band back into the studio in August to get it done, for a 2027 release. Hopefully, fingers firmly crossed, this dream never ends any time soon.

PS: Be on the lookout for Nicole Laurenne’s alter ego Black Viiolet, who released “Dark Blue” – a dusky, jazz-soaked full-length on February 13! The record leans into smoky lounge, neo-soul, and trip-hop textures. Fans who know Nicole from the high-voltage world of The Darts will recognize the intensity, but “Dark Blue” moves in a different direction, built from late-night keys, brass shadows, and the chaos of the road folded into something intimate and cinematic. “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.