Turning Up the Dial: Nicole Laurenne of The Darts and Black Viiolet

It’s 6am on a Monday at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, and Nicole Laurenne’s plane just touched down from Paris. After touring Europe with her garage punk girl band The Darts, Laurenne has to head straight to the courtroom. Not for her own trial - but rather one that she oversees.

Laurenne, the creative mastermind behind The Darts and Black Viiolet was once a judge by day, punk rocker by night. Although Laurenne has put down her gavel, she has turned up the dial for women in music.

The Darts are self-described as “garage-punk-rock grrls that will make your head slam and your feet shake. And then there’s the music.” Starting in 2016, The Darts have had a packed nine years. “I try to put out a record every year,” said Laurenne. “That’s kind of what our thing is. And right when we release a record, we head to Europe.” The Darts are signees of Alternative Tentacles, the record label created by Dead Kennedy’s frontman, Jello Biafra. Their music is explosive, enigmatic, and fully-charged with femininity.

In 2024, following the release of Boomerang, The Darts toured Europe for over 100 days.“We’ve played in the craziest places,” said Laurenne. “We’ve played in caves, boats, and in a prison in Scotland - it never gets old!”

Yep, the once-judge played a punk show in the chapel of Barlinnie Prison, the largest prison in Scotland. “It’s an intense environment, so they [the prisoners] were very polite and cautious…We’d play these crazy songs and they would clap very cautiously…Later the warden said that it was ‘the coolest show we’ve ever had here, and that was the most excited I’ve ever seen them,’” said Laurenne.

Other European escapades include a stint in Spain, the first place Laurenne ever crowd-surfed. In France, The Darts play packed rooms in gorgeous venues. Among the prisons, caves, and boats The Darts have played in, Laurenne loved Norway on their most recent run of shows. “We played an all-ages show to a group of kids in earmuffs and they were making waffles backstage,” she said. The encore was met with the audience raising their beers and serenading Laurenne with the Norwegian national anthem.
 
Laurenne’s signature Manzarek-esque 1968 Farfisa organ has enough melodic power to pierce through the driving rhythm section, giving The Darts a classic feel. “It's one of those instruments in garage rock that speaks above all the other noise and fuzz… you need that piercing sound.” The instrument drives The Darts’ melodies, and literally rocks. You can see Laurenne rocking the organ back and forth in their live performances.

The Darts formed in 2016 as an outlet for uplifting femininity in a male-dominated industry. Laurenne takes inspiration from her mother, who defied patriarchal standards, and raised her with the same expectations. “My mother, who is now 85, was a physicist from India in the ‘60s. She was like the only woman in her class at the University of Michigan, and she just broke barriers…that was the environment I was raised in. You just do it, and you do it well…to this day she still comes to my shows and sells my merch and talks to Jello Biafra. She doesn’t know much about punk rock,” she said. “But to be a woman in this environment is to set an example.”

Laurenne is very aware of the importance of female representation in the face of the patriarchy. Her femininity and music beckons to a greater purpose: she is changing the standard for women in music. “I’m not ashamed to be unapologetically feminine. The sexy guy rock singer is a cliche. The sexy female rock musician who’s also great at what they do - that should be the standard. I want The Darts to be a representation of that whole package.”

Laurenne, being a modern woman of many talents, also started a solo project Black Viiolet in 2024. It embraces the softer side of Laurenne’s sonic interests. “It’s the whole other side of my brain,” she said. Blending sultry vocals and trip hop beats with jazz embellishments, Black Viiolet is genre-bending. “It’s a great break from the screamy-Darts stuff. This is more of the quiet power of a ballad.” Black Viiolet’s debut album After You is fresh off the presses and Laurenne is celebrating by touring the Pacific Northwest.

For 2025, Laurenne is doing something different: touring America. She is taking both The Darts and Black Viiolet on the road throughout the US, showing no sign of slowing down.

You can catch The Darts rocking Doll Festin Downtown Berkeley at Cornerstone Craft Beer & Live Music this Saturday, March 1st! Learn more at dollfest.net.