Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques. 

Thousands of fans, from Stanford students to Bay Area locals, filed into Frost Amphitheater on Oct. 18 to witness indie pop band MUNA’s “Gets So Hot” tour. As the sun set and its warmth went with it, the crowd’s excitement for what was to come — a raunchy, sensual display of queer joy — grew so strong you could almost see it floating over their heads.

Prior to MUNA taking the stage, Hemlocke Springs opened the show with a bang. The alt-pop artist played hits like “girlfriend” and “sever the blight,” the first of which went viral on TikTok in 2022 and has somehow beaten the app’s curse of weak staying power. Even though most of the crowd couldn’t sing along to Springs’ songs word-for-word, her infectious energy gave everyone no choice but to clap, or at the very least, bounce side-to-side. 

Springs’ voice was so resounding that it was easy to imagine someone laying in their bed all the way in GovCo, hearing every one of her high notes or giggles. By the end of her set, she’d taken to commanding the crowd with a grand sword, and I was already searching the internet for the setlist so I could add her to my playlist.

As the lights went out on stage, the crowd compressed towards the barricade, eager yet still refreshingly polite. The conversations happening around me — about lesbian dating trends in the Bay, about polyamory and all its offshoots, about regrets over not bringing appropriate outerwear — slowly faded as MUNA came out with a bang. A bright, white graphic of a fan (an homage to one of their most streamed songs, “Number One Fan”) lit up the stage screen, followed by flashing lights and a teaser of “It Gets So Hot,” the first song on MUNA’s setlist and the tour’s titular track. 

The show was practically non-stop from there. MUNA’s music managed to strike the perfect balance between rock and pop, combining bone-chilling guitar solos and a blatant disregard for the norm with earworms that embody the unbridled joy of dancing with a stranger in a club (or a gay bar, an experience they explicitly reference in their 2022 song “What I Want”). 

All of MUNA’s members — Naomi McPherson, Josette Maskin and Katie Gavin — have a thrilling approach to stage presence. Despite freely admitting that they could barely see anything or anyone in the crowd, that didn’t stop them from taking upwards of 10 minutes to try to read messages off of faraway phones, or to simply converse about their hatred of AI and love of trains. At one point, Maskin chased the others onstage; later, Gavin danced against McPherson while the latter tried their hardest to focus on simultaneously singing and playing the keyboard. 

I think that’s my favorite thing about MUNA, really. They’re just three lesbians who happen to be best friends and are, not to mention, extremely talented. I vividly remember the summer of 2023, when my friend first introduced me to their music beyond their hit “Silk Chiffon.” I was instantly hooked. Rarely ever before had I seen my brand of queerness — the gender non-conformity, the familial friendship structures — represented on such a stage. I vowed to myself and to my friends from home that I’d replicate their story: go off to college, find some other lesbians and start a trio. Not a musical one, necessarily. Just anyone I could find to keep me afloat 3,000 miles away from home. 

I’ve always been awkward about going places alone, but hearing hits like “Eastside Girls” and “Kind Of Girl” left me too excited to worry about how I looked or what the people behind me thought of my jumping and screaming. One moment, I was watching Gavin and Maskin flirting playfully midstage; the next, I was pumping my fists to “Big Stick,” a song about government surveillance and American imperialism. Somehow the excitement coursing through my veins stayed consistent throughout, even as the songs’ themes went from serious to euphoric to strangely sad, despite their energetic backing tracks.

“Stayaway” might have been the highlight of my night. It’s a truly devastating song about how the hardest part of a breakup is often not the initial split, but the tedium of going through the motions without the person with whom you once shared them. It’s about avoiding the bar because the bar means drinks, which means thinking about them; it’s about staying in because every road seems to lead back to this person. “Stayaway” is a song I’ve loved since the first time I heard it. 

I’ve never felt it as potently as I did last Sunday, though. The bridge carries that perfect kind of heartbreak that makes you want to listen over and over again, blurring the line between masochism and pure artistic appreciation. This was really when all my inhibitions melted away. My head snapped back and I screamed every word. It felt like everyone was doing the same. For two hours, it didn’t matter what midterms were coming up or how messed up just about everything else was; all that mattered was dancing.

MUNA, of course, ended with “Silk Chiffon,” their perennial hit with a simple message: “Life’s so fun.” And man, if it wasn’t fun before, it certainly was after this show.