🌂 Welcome to Velvet Umbrella Records

Velvet Umbrella Records: A Soft Place for Music, Healing & Radical Creative Care

Velvet Umbrella Records wasn’t born in a boardroom or a polished studio. It began in a circle — a group of artists, survivors, and spoonies who had lost trust in the music industry… and slowly found their way back to sound, together.

We are a small independent label built on collaboration, community, and creative recovery — a home for the tender, the strange, the experimental, and the heartfelt.

Here, music isn’t about perfection. It’s about survival. It’s about connection. It’s about building something new from what was broken.

🦕 From the Ashes, a Dinosaur Roared

Meet Tea Kinsington, founder of Studio TeaZilla and co-founder of Velvet Umbrella Records.

Tea is a multimedia artist, designer, and musician who found her way back to creating through a character she invented, a dinosaur named TeaZilla. What started as a protective inner creature became a lifeline, helping her reimagine what art could be after trauma.

She had long written lyrics, melodies, and visual stories under the name Gala Violet, a personal dreamworld created in middle and high school as a refuge from abuse and neglect. Much of it was later destroyed by an abusive partner.

Years later, after surviving further harm, including a traumatic band rehearsal when trying to re-enter the music world, she shut it all down. Music felt unsafe.

But art has a way of returning.

Mickey Fingers

Producer • Multi-Instrumentalist • Cabaret Trickster

Mickey Fingers is the velvet-gloved architect behind much of Gala Violet’s sonic world. Equal parts mischief-maker and mentor, he has a knack for turning fragments into full-blown cabaret fire. From whispered journal lines to thunderous choruses, Mickey’s gift is pulling the magic out of the margins and placing it center stage.

As Velvet Umbrella’s main engineer and multi-instrumentalist, Mickey moves effortlessly between drums, guitars, piano, synths, and even junk percussion, shaping sounds with equal parts precision and play. He loves long walks, Ableton Live, and experimenting with textures as much as he loves capturing raw, unvarnished emotion.

With a background steeped in both music and myth, Mickey isn’t afraid to blur genres or realities. He delights in the theatrical, the shadowy, the unexpected, and treats every song like a character waiting to step into the light.

At Velvet Umbrella Records, Mickey is more than a producer: he’s a co-creator, a spark-striker, and a reminder that sometimes the strangest seeds grow into the most unforgettable stories.

Gala Violet: The Band, The Revival, The Spark

Gala Violet came to life again, not just as a name in a journal, but as a band formed by a circle of fellow Spoonies who met in an Artist’s Way group. What started as a shared demo project blossomed into something more.

The songs were personal. The lyrics hit home for all of us. We weren’t just helping Tea record old songs; we were co-creating a safe space to feel, to be witnessed, and to rebuild.

We didn’t want to wait for gatekeepers anymore, so we created Velvet Umbrella Records for ourselves and for anyone like us: artists healing from trauma, recovering from burnout, or simply needing a space that values softness over polish.

What We Stand For

• Music as medicine, not product

• Trauma-informed creativity

• DIY collaboration with community at the center

• Support for neurodivergent, disabled, queer, and underrepresented artists

• Art that whispers, weeps, dreams, and transforms

✨ What You’ll Find Here

• Honest, unvarnished music that speaks from lived experience

• Projects by Gala Violet and other artists under the umbrella

• Calls for collaboration, mutual aid, and collective growth

• Space to breathe, grieve, experiment, and begin again

You’re Welcome Here

Whether you’re a fellow Spoonie artist, a curious listener, or someone who has carried too much and still dares to sing — this is your invitation. Come as you are.

We’re not here to make it big.

We’re here to make it matter.

Welcome to Velvet Umbrella Records.

We’re so glad you’re here.

— Tea & Mickey Fingers, Gala Violet, and the Velvet Umbrella Circle

✨ About Mickey Fingers

Mickey Fingers is the co-creator of Velvet Umbrella Records and Gala Violet. A multi-instrumentalist and engineer-producer, he moves between drums, guitar, bass, piano, and synth with ridiculous ease, building worlds in Ableton Live. Equal parts mystery and mischief, he’s a steady hand in the chaos and a spark in the shadows.