The Mint was already buzzing before Anna Duboc took the stage, but once she appeared, the room seemed to pulse with an entirely new voltage. Family, friends and devoted fans packed the storied Los Angeles club, responding to virtually every song with whoops, cheers and affectionate encouragement that made this perhaps the most exuberant and emotionally invested crowd I’ve seen at one of Anna’s shows. And she gave them plenty to cheer about.
Since her April appearance at the venue, the 20-year-old singer/songwriter has grown noticeably more assured, not only as a vocalist but as a performer who understands how to inhabit a stage. Dressed in a shimmering pale-blue, rhinestone-encrusted corset top and matching embellished jeans, she moved with a relaxed sensuality and increasingly instinctive theatricality—swaying, bouncing, bending into phrases, dropping briefly into a half-crouch, pointing toward the audience and using her hands, arms and entire body to punctuate the compelling stories in her songs. She wasn’t simply singing to the room; she was communicating with it. There is a palpable confidence emerging in Anna now, a feeling that she knows exactly where she wants to take a song and more fearless than ever about getting there.
Opening with “Cherry Pick,” Anna immediately settled into the song’s cool, thumping mid-rhythmic foundation, easing around the stage with sultry fluidity as her fingers and arms became extensions of the narrative. Her voice was predominantly centered in a warm, soulful middle register, but she colored it with silky, smoky textures and a bluesy bite, saving a particularly earthy, guttural intensity for the bridge. The song’s accusation—that someone loves only the attractive, convenient parts of another person while rejecting the messy reality—came alive through her animated physical performance. She pointed into the crowd, crouched and rose, then turned the closing vocal break into an opportunity to climb into a remarkably high register, wordless vocalizing revealing the impressive altitude available above her comfortable midrange. By the final repetitions, her voice had become more impassioned and blues-drenched, transforming a catchy pop-R&B number into something viscerally charged.
“Sinking Feeling” offered an entirely different facet of her artistry. Here Anna began with a delicate, breathy, almost whisper-flecked vocal that recalled the intimate, ethereal quality of Billie Eilish. Her voice floated above a gentle, lilting beat before the rhythm intensified and she shifted almost effortlessly into a more emphatic middle register. That contrast—angelic one moment, earthy and earthy and full-bodied the next—is becoming one of her signatures. She bent toward the audience as she sang, as if physically trying to close the distance between performer and listener, while the soulful “ah-huh” responses of her backing vocalists created an irresistible call-and-response texture. By the end, she had moved through sensual, poppy and subtly funky territory before returning to a hushed, vaporous whisper.
Anna’s connection to Katy Perry gave “The One That Got Away” an especially personal resonance: she performed with Perry when she was only nine. Her rendition was faithful but hardly reverential, injecting the familiar heartbreak anthem with buoyant piano, a lively rhythm and a playful sense of motion. She touched her chest, reached outward and bent into the bridge before unleashing soaring high notes and confident belts. The juxtaposition was revealing: although the lyric is steeped in regret, Anna performed it with infectious joy, demonstrating that she can inhabit a song’s underlying feeling without becoming imprisoned by its mood.
“Willing to Give,” from her forthcoming Once in a Blue Moon EP, returned to the complicated psychological territory that drives her songwriting. Beginning with an elegant, hypnotic piano figure and a heavenly vocal, the song gradually intensifies around the realization that affection without reciprocity is ultimately insufficient. Anna became comparatively still at first, emphasizing particular lines with pointed gestures before the beat hardened and her vocal moved between delicate upper-register phrasing and surprisingly gritty low notes. As she repeated the central realization that she needs more than the other person is willing to give, her body became more animated, eventually leaning into a crouch before rising again. It was a beautifully controlled marriage of vocal dynamics and physical storytelling.