📍 House of Blues Dallas — July 27, 2025
Written by: Clinton Camper
It’s hard to overstate the magnetism of keshi — but the crowd at The Bomb Factory Tuesday night did a great job trying. From the moment he stepped on stage, draped in a black fishnet top with more holes than fabric, wide-leg jeans chained up like a final boss, and tattoos crawling down both arms, the room erupted. All the girlies (and plenty of boys) were absolutely feral for their soft-spoken, genre-bending king.
Backed by a full band perched dramatically above him — drums, keys, guitar, bass — keshi owned the lower ground with quiet command. He asked if we could top Houston. Challenge accepted.
The crowd was a beautiful mix of diehards, many of them Asian-American, screaming every lyric back to him like gospel. “Dallas fucks,” he laughed mid-set, and based on the decibel levels, he wasn't lying.
It was hit after hit after hit. Limbo sent the room into a frenzy, Forever pulled heartstrings with that signature quiver in his voice, and Understand had couples slow dancing in the back like it was prom night for the heartbreak kids. He told us Drunk was written about throwing up on a walk from 6th Street to West Campus in Austin — and somehow, that made us love it more.
Even when the room got sweaty, a guy with a personal fan fanning the crowd like a local hero kept the moment light. The production? Trippy and glitchy visuals mixed with live feeds of the stage, like watching a Tumblr mood board come to life in 4K.
One of the night’s most memorable moments came when a fan passed up a rice hat. He wore it briefly — crowd goes wild — then said it didn’t match the fit but he was keeping it anyway. Born and raised in Houston, keshi honors his Vietnamese heritage in subtle but meaningful ways. There’s a quiet pride in everything he does, even when he’s joking about his “soft spot for the couples” while breaking every single heart in the room.
By the time he played Just to Die, it felt like therapy. “If you’re going through it, I hope this song is medicine,” he told us. We believed him.
He closed with Euphoria, the crowd fully transformed into his backup choir. Then he disappeared. The crowd screamed. He came back. One final track — ID. The kind of ending that leaves you vibrating in your chest and thinking, this man is going to be a megastar.
Spoiler alert: he already is.