ANNA DUBOC at The Mint, Los Angeles

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.

Next came “Object of Affection,” her hauntingly intimate, quietly devastating new single, which became one of the evening’s most affecting moments. Sitting on a stool with only Sam Antrosio’s acoustic guitar beside her, Anna initially stripped away the theatricality and let the song breathe. Her voice was confessional plaintive and almost translucent, hovering above the lilting singer-songwriter arrangement.

As the drums enter0ed and the guitar strumming grew more insistent, however, the performance steadily accumulated dramatic weight. She remained physically restrained, occasionally touching her chest, allowing the lyric to do the heavy lifting. When she sang the title phrase in that crystalline upper register, the effect was h0aunting. By the second chorus she was standing, her voice climbing higher as the music intensified, until the final passage dissolved into an almost weightless whisper before she returned to the stool and quietly repeated the refrain. It was one of the evening’s most affecting moments.

“Toxin” brought the funky propulsion back with a hypnotic marching beat and jangling guitar. Initially seated, Anna leaned forward before rising as the rhythm intensified, attacking the funky “Speak of the devil” hook with the authority of an anthem. The song’s fascinating tension between attraction and danger—love or poison, devotion or damage—was mirrored by her ability to move from a softer, quietly revealing line into more forceful, almost guttural declarations. Her backing vocalists were especially effective during the bridge, their harmonies adding propulsion to an already buoyant vibe.

She sat at the keyboard for her 2025 recording of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights,” a song she has cited as an inspiration for her own songwriting. The choice made perfect sense. Bush’s surreal ghost story, with its mixture of desire, jealousy, abandonment and obsessive desire, inhabits precisely the kind of ambiguous romantic territory that fascinates Anna as a writer. She nailed the song’s otherworldly high notes from the opening, but what impressed most was her ability to alternate those crystalline, almost operatic peaks with a grounded, rich middle register. With restrained drums and bass beneath her piano, the performance became moody, seductive, meditative and more and more mesmerizing.

“Plot Twist,” also performed from the keyboard, further demonstrated Anna’s gift for lyrical vulnerability. The production moved between dark, atmospheric bass and drums and passages where she was accompanied only by her graceful piano playing. Her vocal followed the same trajectory, shifting within the same lines from fragile and vulnerable to impassioned and soulful. The song’s central longing—to reconnect after circumstances have fractured a relationship—was conveyed with remarkable delicacy.

“Boy Next Door,” due September 25, provided another important glimpse of Anna’s development. With cameras capturing footage for the upcoming single, she unleashed a thoroughly commercial, funky pop confection, complete with a singalong chorus that immediately sparked the crowd’s participation, chanting the lines “They want him and that’s too bad/You want him and that’s too bad” Turning her back and looking over her shoulder, she added a slyly sexy theatrical flourish before returning to the song’s mischievous, sassy momentum. Amid all the deeply personal material, it was a welcome reminder that Anna is also developing into a savvy pop songwriter capable of writing something designed simply to make people move and sing.

She saved “Mystery Lady” for the finale, and it was a bravura conclusion. Kneeling, rising, dancing and prancing around the stage, Anna transformed the song into a joyful celebration of her magnetic stage persona. She teased the audience with its “Do you dare?” refrain, introduced her band and backing singers, then returned to the chorus with a combination of soaring vocals and gritty, guttural passion. A funky drum solo extended the celebration after she left the stage, the band continuing to jam as the evening finally wound down.

What makes Anna Duboc such a captivating live performer is the way her many strengths are beginning to converge. Her voice is extraordinary in its range, moving from breathy, delicate whispers and crystalline high notes to rounded, soulful mids and surprisingly raw guttural depths. But vocal technique, for all its sophistication, is only one dimension of her appeal. She is learning how to perform those sounds—when to unleash them, when to restrain them and how to make every vocal color serve to illuminate the song’s shifting moods. Most importantly, she is becoming visibly more comfortable owning the stage. At The Mint in April and in previous performances, there was already enormous promise. On August 28, there was something more: the unmistakable feeling of an artist coming fully into her own.