Washington, DC, was host to a rare co-headlining tour stop for Sweden’s Fever Ray and LA’s 100 gecs. In fact, it’s the only night that both acts were playing under one roof on their respective tours, bringing wild-dressed fans of all ages to a special night at The Anthem that opened with New York duo Machine Girl awakening the crowd with a rowdy performance.

Fever Ray’s latest album, Radical Romantics, is a slow-burner of an album in comparison to 2017’s frenetic Plunge, but Karin Dreijer and company, in ill-fitting business formal attire, can bewitch a crowd with slow, deliberately synchronized moves, an intense stare, and a soft smile carried into the ether.

100 gecs takes the opposite approach, throwing in wild strobe lights, visuals of melting bodies, distorted mouths shrinking into more and more mouths – compelling waves of bouncing to take place across the pit. Their take-no-prisoners approach cut across genres: ska, pop-punk, screamo, acoustic; it’s all fair game to them.

Even if their takes on electronic pop couldn’t be more different from one another, both Fever Ray and 100 gecs share a penchant for the weird, the conventionally off-putting, and the defiant. It shows in the way that Karin Dreijer performs in their monochrome, Joker-reminiscent makeup and boxy business attire. In the way that Laura Les and Dylan Brady mix their hyper-pop hit “ringtone” with the bassline from Shaggy’s “Angel” in the song’s live rendition, just because. And most notably, in the way that both groups are proudly led by queer and trans musicians. In doing so, both groups invited a crowd that embraced swing dancing in mosh pits, videos recorded with a Nintendo 3DS, and the occasional wizard or furry outfit.

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