Kevin Bronson on April 7th, 2015

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Viva Violet is the pedigreed duo of Jiha Lee and Nick White, longtime friends who have called Chicago, Omaha and Athens, Ga., home, and started their new project last year in L.A. Lee, the former keyboardist in the Good Life (and like White, who has toured with Adam Green, Binki Shapiro and Tilly and the Wall, a Bright Eyes alum), takes the foreground on the duo’s single “Nothing Illuminated,” plaintively suggesting that self-delusion is part of our landscape, with “palm trees and pavement” and everything else. The song appears on a self-titled EP that Lee and White recorded with producer Will Golden that features Daniel Ocanto (Big Harp) on drums. There’s a deceiving innocence in Viva Violet’s guitar-keys-and-samples approach that recalls the early music of Rilo Kiley — coincidentally, Lee played flute on that band’s 2002 (thematically similar?) song “Hail to Whatever You Found in the Sunlight that Surrounds You.” Illumination, of course, often comes from reading between the lines.

||| Stream: “Nothing Illuminated”

||| Live: Viva Violet, along with Nik Freitas and Jake Bellows, play Wednesday at Lot 1 Cafe.