Words and Photos by Kaley Klapisch
Indigo De Souza hates playing her old songs.
Halfway through the show, doused in cool blue light—fitting for the water imagery that runs through her latest album, Precipice— she confessed to the audience, “One of the things I hate is when people are like ‘I wish you played your old songs.’” And yet, she sang them for us anyway.
Performing at Webster Hall on Monday, October 27, De Souza brought her Precipice tour to New York, supported by recording artist Mothé. The self-described “total popstar” joined her onstage for their new single “Serious”— a track the two wrote together the first time they met. Alongside new songs like “Crying Over Nothing” and “Heartthrob,” her setlist also reached back to long-loved hits such as “You Can Be Mean” from All of This Will End (2023) and “Ghost,” from her breakthrough record, I Love My Mom (2018).
Cool, crisp, yet echoic, De Souza’s vocals rippled through the hall as lights washed her in aqua, violet, and pink. During “Real Pain,” one of the final songs of the night, she threw her hands towards the ceiling as she hit impossible high notes— interpretative movements that recalled the expressive intensity of Kate Bush or Bjӧrk.
Precipice marked De Souza’s first collaboration with producer Elliott Kozel, whom she met in a “blind session” that resulted in the album’s opening track, “Be My Love.” Together, they conceived an ethereal, pop-inflected sound that departs from her earlier, more stripped-back work. Though that glossy tonal shift initially divided listeners and critics when the album dropped this summer—enough for De Souza to log off Instagram entirely in July 2025—she returned to the stage unapologetic, grounded, and proud of the music she’s made.
And New York showed up in turn, selling out Webster Hall. Artists aren’t stagnant, just as people aren’t. Each of De Souza’s album covers feature vivid artwork by her mother: a pair of skeletons in liminal, suburban settings— a drainage pipe, a supermarket, a desert car wreck. Precipice finds our familiar friend collecting shells by the ocean, standing on the shore of something refreshingly new.
“I’m not afraid of dying anymore / I’m not afraid of living either”—Indigo De Souza, “Not Afraid,” Precipice (2025)
Loudspeaker Collective 