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Khruangbin Take Webster Hall on an Intimate Voyage

Khruangbin – Webster Hall – November 10, 2025

You’d never guess it was a Monday last night when Houston band Khruangbin played a sold-out Webster Hall. The venue (which is significantly smaller than Forest Hills Stadium, where the band played last year) was packed to the gills with fans eager to help the trio celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut LP, The Universe Smiles Upon You. To commemorate the occasion, Khruangbin also rerecorded that very album with reworked versions of songs and dropped it as a new release last week. For a solid 100+ minutes, Khruangbin had everyone in the room collectively swaying and grooving as they wove their way through the album, with some choice cuts from other records and covers sprinkled throughout.

The band is comprised of Mark Speer on guitar, Laura Lee Ochoa on bass, and Donald “DJ” Johnson on drums — and they’ve been a tight unit for the duration of their existence. For this small-club tour, they have grown their presence with a fourth player: Will Van Horn, who augmented their live sound with a panoply of instruments: cradling an additional guitar, playing percussive elements like a tambourine or cowbell, and seated behind a pedal steel guitar. My personal favorite was when I realized he was scraping a washboard hanging from his neck against his chest with a pair of spoons. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing Khruangbin as the usual trio with Speer and his amazing guitar work bolstered by Ochoa’s and Johnson’s more subtle and incredibly steady rhythm section, but it was quite entertaining catching all the accents added by Van Horn.

The band was mostly shrouded in backlighting and fog was constantly pumped onto the stage, which made for a moody presentation. Owlvaro, their beloved stuffed owl mascot, perched atop an amp. Both Speer and Ochoa had their customary wigs on, and Johnson wore sunglasses, which all added to their mysterious demeanor. While I normally attend shows as a photographer and primarily experience concerts visually, this time, I took in the performance as an observer, part of the time with my eyes closed, preferring not to let the mental snapshots invade my mind and instead absorbing the notes as they floated through the air. Speer asked us near the beginning of the show to acknowledge our neighbors and to make a new friend, since we were embarking on a sonic journey together, as though we were on an airplane chartered by Khruangbin, taking us on an epic voyage through the many influences that can be heard throughout their catalog.

Several years ago, I caught a video livestream of Spears and Ochoa spinning records in their living room and found the variety of cuts they selected fascinating. I then discovered various Spotify playlists that Khruangbin had created, each reflecting an imaginary flight from one international city to another. Their knowledge of the music of other cultures is vast and is evident in their own music and collaborations with other artists. While they ended up playing a total of 16 distinct and largely instrumental songs last night, it could almost have been a beautiful, seamless mix much like one of those playlists, with the way their music flows and builds. The loudest cheers were heard for “María También” from their second album, Con Todo el Mundo, and the crowd went nuts for “People Everywhere (Still Alive),” which closed out the main set with the disco ball spinning and reflecting glints of light.

When the band returned to the stage following a short break, they just about floored me with their wordless cover of Sade’s “Cherish the Day.” It was one of those “Are they really playing what I think they’re playing?” moments that made me feel bad for people who left before the encore. And to close out the special evening, they finished with “Bin Bin” and “Zionsville II.”

Ochoa mentioned that 10 years ago, Khruangbin played their first show in the United States at the tiny Rough Trade NYC, when it was still located in Williamsburg, so it was special for them to be playing at Webster Hall a decade later. She added that she had written a diary entry back in the day recounting that evening, and that after that show, she ate some oysters on a rooftop somewhere in the city, because “I am a rock star.” Khruangbin most certainly are rock stars now who have come so far from their humble Texas beginnings. —Ellen Qbertplaya | instagram.com/qbertplaya

Photos courtesy of DeShaun Craddock | dac.photography

i miss them </333

#laura leezy #laura lee #khruangbin #mark speer #dj johnson #donald ray

Khruangbin Sound Otherworldly at Brooklyn Steel on Saturday Night

Khruangbin – Brooklyn Steel – December 8, 2018

While you weren’t paying attention, Khruangbin went from “How do you pronounce their name?” to selling out two nights at Brooklyn Steel in the time it took bass player Laura Lee to change outfits before the encore on Saturday night. Or, much more likely, you have been paying attention. Their unique, infectious groove music has been hard to ignore, and the packed house loved every minute of it. It’s not every day you see a band that plays mostly instrumental music resonate and captivate a large crowd like that, but the Houston-based trio are not your everyday instrumental band. As they worked through most of the material off of their latest release, Con Todo El Mundo, and 2015’s The Universe Smiles Upon You, they also seemed to be curating an experience: the music working with a look and a feel to deliver a singular, simple message of feeling good.

It’s always interesting to watch a band grow, especially as fast as Khruangbin have. It’s not immediately obvious that their sound—a Thai funk–based laid-back thing that’s part old-school boogie, part hip-hop and part from-worlds-unknown—would work in a venue the size of Brooklyn Steel. But work it did, songs like “Friday Morning” and “August 10” filling a room of dancing fans and fanatics, new and old. It’s not as simple as just turning up the volume knob, the trio—Mark Speer on guitar, Laura Lee on bass and DJ Johnson on drums—have found new room in their material, extra dalliances of funk and slightly more extravagant guitar peaks, to go along with a just-the-right-size light show of colorful beams and galactic disco-ball sparkle.

Saturday night Khruangbin wer a band supremely comfortable in their own skin, even as their outfits (Lee has reached Oscar-red-carpet-worthy nightly “What is she wearing?” status) have become more posh, a comfort that exuded into the room and filled it to the back corners of the ceiling. The multisong encore was a nice encapsulation of where the band is and where they might be going, starting with an older groove, “White Gloves,” before the lights went red and green for their take on Lee Mendelson and Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time Is Here,” the version a perfect fit for their aesthetic and the season. Finally, opener and fellow Houstonite Will Van Horn (who appeared on Con Todo El Mundo) joined in for the last couple of songs on pedal steel guitar, adding an ethereal punch to an already otherworldly sound and maybe pointing to potential new directions. Although with Khruangbin, the only direction now seems to be up. —A. Stein | @Neddyo