On the third Leaf Rapids record, Velvet Paintings, veteran Winnipeg songwriter Keri Latimer makes room for the world. Over a lush palette of roots music—ethereal folk, driving country, and wiry honky-tonk—she shifts her gaze to the environments around her, observing and reflecting on their movements and the movements of the people who direct their motion. While the JUNO Award-winning Latimer has always been a keen seer and interpreter of places and people—as evidenced on Leaf Rapids' globetrotting, identity-investigating 2019 album Citizen Alien—she's never focused her pen outward to the extent she does in the songs of Velvet Paintings. "I'm trying to explore more hopeful areas of this world," she explains. "And I think I just let go of a lot of things."