Thao Nguyen came to DC with fire in her lungs, fever in her feet, and a shimmering incandescence that blasted off the stage. Wearing reflective gold for her homecoming crowd (originally from Falls Church, a suburb of DC), she rippled into and through a set that included old and new songs alike, especially encouraging the crowd to sing along on “Holy Roller”.

Throughout the set, Thao danced around the stage, moving wildly and thrashing as readily as a metalhead. She moved with a kind of ecstasy, inhabiting a space both old and new, riling us to rise with her. The audience danced throughout, never quite matching Thao’s boundless energy.

Her voice sits somewhere close to Fiona Apple and even edging into Sinead O’Connor’s tone, but it’s wholly her own, a gargantuan thing that fills any club.

The show was opened by Why Bonnie and Becca Mancari. Why Bonnie is likely to be a fixture on the indie circuit, and Becca Mancari continues to be a rising star in the scene, honing her songwriting craft even sharper and exploring new textures in her songs.

Here are a few photos from the night.