At a tiny, garage-band style venue, Vérité, an electropop artist from New York, filled the Friday night air with enchanting vocals and captured everyone’s attention through her dynamic stage persona as she took the stage at Kilby Court on Nov. 22.

As Kelsey Byne’s musical persona, Vérité explores themes of love, loss, heartbreak and attempting to connect with others. In French, “vérité” translates to “truth,” and her songs showcase a brutal honesty in their storytelling. Within her music, Vérité balances the line between gentle and ethereal vocals alongside powerful lyrics and dynamic backing instrumentals.  

On Friday night, the concert at Kilby Court began as local artist Belle Jewel took to the stage. With her electric bedroom pop music, angelic vocal sequences and kaleidoscopic background visuals, Belle Jewel introduced concert attendees to a relaxed night full of female empowerment.

As Vérité walked on stage, the venue felt almost filled to capacity. Tickets were nearly sold out, and there were people who had to watch the concert through a window in the building structure because it was so packed. Even though it was a cold night, and the small building didn’t seem to have much insulation, the heat that came from everybody dancing was more than enough to warm the building. Shortly after playing her first few songs of the set, Vérité noticed that the venue was tightly packed and there were a few people outside, so she walked off the stage to move one of the crowd barriers so that attendees could push farther in and slightly wrap around the platform stage. 

Vérité released a new album, “New Skin,” on Oct. 25. Much of her set was dedicated to showcasing her new music, and I loved listening and singing along with the songs off of the album. Even though I was only slightly familiar with her music before attending the concert, it seemed as if some people were able to sing along to every single lyric. During the concert, Vérité explained that she wrote the album from a place of searching for belonging, “We’re all in the middle of our lives. It’s almost as if you can’t see the light at the beginning of the tunnel, and you can’t see the light at the end either. So we’re stuck here in this place of darkness.” Despite the darkness that inspired this album, her songs were light and airy, but they were still able to pack a punch. 

Vérité is mostly known for her cover of The 1975’s “Somebody Else,” which has garnered over 115 million streams on Spotify. Even though I wasn’t too convinced by this cover, she truly made it her own and demonstrated her articulate approach to song production through both the recording and performance of this cover. During the concert, as Vérité performed one of her newer songs, “Think of Me,” I thought that this song was much more successful, and provided an emotional foil to the more melancholic “Somebody Else.” Whereas Matty Healy sings, “I don’t want your body / but I hate to think about you with somebody else,” Vérité shouts, “I hope you f— her with your eyes closed / and think of me.” As both an original track and one that features more anger and honest heartbreak, “Think of Me” was one of the highlights of the night as Vérité taught the audience the words to sing and shout along. 

Overall, Vérité’s concert was incredibly fun and lively. Despite only knowing a few songs before walking into the venue, I had a great time as I both learned some new songs and sang along to the ones that I already loved. 

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@kateannebutton