Chloe Qisha brought her new mixtape to a sold-out House of Yes in Brooklyn on Wednesday night.
The Malaysian born, UK based pop star played six songs from Fantasize, out October 30, alongside favorites like “So Sad, So Hot” and a surprise cover of “Does Your Mother Know.”
Before she ever stepped on stage, the venue had already set the tone. House of Yes announces itself from the corner of Wyckoff Avenue; the word “YES” runs across the side of the building in orange and hot pink, above a row of painted eyes and mouths. Inside, the commitment continues. Even the bathroom stall reflects light with studded glitter and pearl walls, and the toilet paper dispenser looks like it came from a fabulous underwater kingdom. Further inside, a carved proscenium frames a pair of velvet curtains. On Wednesday night, the curtains revealed a sold-out room, dancing its way through the wait for Chloe Qisha.
House of Yes lights up the corner of Wyckoff Avenue on show night. Photo by The Knockturnal.
Luis Fernando held the DJ booth while the lights flared, and when Qisha finally walked out in a red corset top, the stage turned the corresponding deep scarlet of a darkroom. She opened with “Mama!” and “Question of the Day” before settling into “Fantasize,” the mixtape the night revolved around. The record doesn’t come out until October 30, but six of its songs made the setlist. They sat alongside favorites like “So Sad, So Hot,” “21st Century Cool Girl,” and “Baby Girl.”
Her sound carried the mixtape into every corner of the room. The songs lean into the eighties, with glassy synth lines and a faint disco pulse, but the voice above them belongs entirely to the present: soft, inviting, and full of a smooth energy. It is the voice of someone talking close to your ear in a loud room. She blends the cutting electricity of Charli XCX with the relatable girlhood and captivating charm of Olivia Rodrigo. Qisha has so much magnetism that she never has to push.
The stage turns deep red as Qisha takes the mic. Photo by The Knockturnal.
Between songs, she spoke with the same smooth intimacy, along with the intrigue of someone briefing her roommates on an ongoing romantic disaster. There was a guy she had been so infatuated with, she explained, that she thought about him endlessly; every song she wrote seemed to be about him, the boy of her dreams, but the problem remained that he also hoped for a boy of his dreams. She delivered this information with the flatness of a witness giving sworn testimony. When “He Likes Boys” appeared later in the set, the crowd was in on her joke.
Chloe next announced that she hates slow songs, that she is “simply allergic” to ballads, and then played one anyway. The allergy, it seems, is manageable. Midway through, she also mentioned that “Sex, Drugs & Existential Dread” had appeared in Prime Video’s “Off Campus,” The college romance was a fitting home for a song with that title. Qisha’s gift is making these little dispatches feel like part of the performance rather than interruptions to it. The arrangement of songs may be meticulous, but the person singing them seems perfectly happy to let the conversation wander.
Finally, Qisha paused to introduce her band: “Look at these delicious boys!” she said, and the delicious boys then launched into a cover of “Does Your Mother Know.” She had opened the night with “Mama!” and now she was asking about ours. Luis Fernando’s earlier choice of “Dancing Queen” had softened the room, priming the crowd for Swedish pop and its peculiar ability to make strangers feel briefly related. Now, the crowd sang ABBA back at the stage.
With the charge in the room, it is easy to forget how recently Qisha arrived. Her debut single came out in July 2024; her first show, that October, sold out immediately. Since then, she has supported Sabrina Carpenter and Coldplay and appeared on magazine covers across the UK. At House of Yes, the scale of her momentum was palpable, with the room occasionally feeling like a container built for a slightly smaller version of her. Qisha’s pop, at its best, turned private humiliations and silly stories into public property. House of Yes was big enough on Wednesday, but when “Fantasize” comes out on October 30, it probably won’t be.
