beabadoobee is a super-duper rockstar on the rise

Seamlessly jumping genres and switching gears, beabadoobee is a masterful young musician with a unique sound that takes the best offerings of past incarnations of indie rock and fuses it with the soulful, angelic indie and bedroom pop sounds of today.

Before the revelation that was last Saturday night at The Novo in downtown Los Angeles, I had only heard a single beabadoobee song in my life. It was, of course, Powfu’s wildly popular “Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head),” on which beabadoobee’s song “Coffee” was sampled. Powfu’s remix took TikTok and the world by storm in 2020, earning over one billion plays on Spotify.

With her instantly quotable lyrics, graceful playful melodies and refreshing new rock sound, beabadoobee, whose real name is Beatrice Laus, quickly rose to prominence in the indie streaming world. Today, Bea (as her fans lovingly refer to her as) already sells out venues across the nation — L.A. included. Next year, she will open for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras” Tour in massive stadiums in several cities across America. With this gig on the horizon, she will only be getting bigger from here.

However, before beabadoobee took the stage, audience members were treated to a performance by Lowertown, an electronic and lo-fi group based in Atlanta, Georgia that has been on the road with Bea for the past few weeks. Consisting of members Olive Osby and Avshalom Weinberg, their set consisted of hard, energetic tunes that had the whole crowd rocking their heads along. With the star presence and aura of any legendary classic rock group, Lowertown commanded the stage and embraced the senses with passion and power.

“The audiences are always really loving and really open to new things, which is great. It’s nice to get really close with a tight-knit group of people. But, we’re still very much finding ourselves as people,” Weinberg said in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “This is the most intense form of being perceived. You’re sort of pushed into hyperdrive to find yourself and your self-image.”

While the band takes inspiration from iconic bands of the past such as Radiohead, Lowertown’s music and stage presence is undeniably their own.

“It’s really easy to get influenced by what’s blowing up right now,” Osby said. “But that stuff is always changing. What doesn’t change is stuff you authentically make. It ages better and feels better.”

After Lowertown’s electric performance, Bea put on an utterly enthralling show, one that perfectly balanced delicate intimate moments with bursts of communal joy. During songs like “Ripples,” concertgoers felt a taste of her earlier years — just a girl and her acoustic guitar, a single spotlight shining on a dark stage. For songs such as “Last Day On Earth” and “Cologne,” Bea and the whole band brought the house down and lit up the stage with a celebration of colors and explosion of sound. There was a wonderful glow and haze to it all. A feeling of love and comfort. A safe space was created.

The energy in the audience was spectacular. One look around would assure you that she truly meant the world to these fans. Screaming, jumping, dancing, crying. Beat after beat, song after song. The crowd was roaring when she first walked on, and those roars didn’t die down until the very end. The passion and love in the room was palpable. Bea was all in from the very start, having the time of her life with her wonderful musicians with plenty of winks, grins and riffs to go around.

This past Saturday night, L.A. witnessed a rockstar in the making, with a very thrilling and hopeful sound: something new, something awesome, something warm and exciting. Here was an artist that truly connected with her fans. And in a few short hours, beabadoobee had a brand new fan in me too. 

Here’s the tea: “Coffee” was not the work of a one-hit wonder. beabadoobee is a force to be reckoned with.