Son of the Velvet Rat is the Austrian duo featuring songwriter Georg Altziebler and Heike Binder. Their spare, atmospheric “folk-noir” has been likened to a desert variant of Americana. Recent releases have deepened that mood. Reviews of Solitary Company and Ghost Ranch describe a melancholic, “desert noir” palette, placing the music in the same stark light that surrounds their adopted second home near Joshua Tree.

Shot on location in Yucca Valley in February, the portraits lean into that tonality with natural light washed with subtle strobe, sun-bleached textures, and a restrained color range, while opening a warmer register between the two musicians. Local donkeys (Taco and Moose) add a brief note of whimsy without breaking the frame’s quiet story. These pictures are meant to hold both sides at once: the band’s austere, hypnotic sound and the human ease of a partnership more than twenty years in.