Velvet Kove - Even Angels Get Lonely

Richmond, VA based singer, songwiter, and multimedia artist Velvet Kove just dropped her first self produced beat tape Even Angels Get Lonely. The 3 track tape starts with Boys Don’t Cry, an infectious dance beat laced with spacey chords and vocoder leads. The second track, New Balance, begins as an airy, indie R&B type beat, and then shifts to bouncy electronic bass drums and synth arps. On the final track, Can You Keep It Down, Velvet Kove jams on some 8-bit sounding patches over a heavy drum machine. It sounds like something out of a Sega Genesis game.

The origin story of Velvet Kove shares similarities with Tapedrop’s. Both started in New Jersey on a 2012 MacBook Pro. While house/cat sitting for her VCU professor in NJ, Velvet Kove began to tinker with Logic on her old MacBook. Since then she has graduated to an iMac with Ableton, an Arturia Keystep and a Blue Mic. “I am a strict Ableton kinda gal” she stressed in our interview.

St. Vincent was her inital musical inspiration, but now her ear is more on hyperpop acts like SOPHIE, 100 gecs and Charli XCX. “I want to mix that industrial, mechanical sound, but with more 80s influences. I’m really into Dua Lipa right now, obvously Lady Gaga - just all of the popstars that are like ‘okay we get it, they’re famous already’. But yeah, I just wanna be a popstar.”

A big driver for Velvet Kove is increasing the representation of women in the production side of music. She cited that only three women have won a Grammy for Producer of the Year, and all three were for the classical category. A woman has never won a non-classical Grammy for Producer of the Year. Maybe one day Velvet Kove will change that.

Even Angels Get Lonely and the rest of Velvet Kove’s discography are available on all the major streaming platforms. Check out her Tapedrop Artist Card for links.