Chin Up, Buttercup: Austra’s Ethereal Return to the Crocodile

The Crocodile felt like it had been temporarily rewired its usual rock‑leaning pulse replaced with something colder, sharper, and unmistakably electronic. Austra’s return to Seattle had been circled on calendars for weeks, but for me, it carried an extra charge. The last time I saw Katie Stelmanis was in 2017, back when she played the original Crocodile on Blanchard. She had just released her third album, Future Politics, and the room felt almost too small to contain the scale of what she was doing. Now, nearly a decade later and with her fifth studio album, Chin Up, Buttercup, released in November 2025 after a five‑year gap we were once again lucky enough to have her back. It felt like a full‑circle moment, the kind that makes a show feel bigger than the room it’s in.

This time, Stelmanis was joined by her current touring band: bassist Char Aragoza and drummer Vania Lee, both of whom brought a fresh, kinetic energy to the set. Stelmanis remains the only permanent member of Austra, but the trio moved with the cohesion of a long‑running ensemble. Aragoza’s bass lines added warmth and weight to the colder synth textures, while Lee’s drumming which was precise, sharp, and almost architectural gave the night its pulse.

Stelmanis alternated between standing center‑stage with her microphone commanding, statuesque, luminous and drifting from side to side, engaging with the audience in a way that felt intimate despite the venue’s modern polish. At times she moved to the keyboard set up on the right side of the stage, layering her own synth lines into the mix with a kind of quiet precision. The staging was simple but intentional, letting her voice and presence do the heavy lifting.

The vibe was dreamy and ethereal from the first note, exactly the kind of atmosphere Austra excels at conjuring. The music felt contagious in the best way, waves of synths rolling through the room and pulling us into a collective sway. It wasn’t the kind of show where people jump or shout; it was one where bodies moved like tides, drifting and dancing through the night as if guided by some invisible current. Austra’s sound has always lived in that liminal space between the physical and the celestial, and in the Crocodile’s warm acoustics, it felt even more immersive.

The setlist pulled from across Austra’s catalog, but the night leaned heavily into the band’s newest material. Songs from Chin Up, Buttercup landed with a kind of emotional clarity sharpened by the long wait between releases. The night started with new songs “Siren Song,” and “Math Equation.”

What makes Austra so compelling live is the tension between precision and emotion. Stelmanis is a classically trained vocalist, and you can hear it in every sustained note, every controlled vibrato. During “Lose It,” the crowd sang the falsetto hook back at her, a rare moment where her voice didn’t tower above the room but blended into it. “Home” arrived mid‑set, its slow‑burn ache amplified by the Crocodile’s acoustics, the kind of song that makes the entire room go still.

The highlight of the night for me was when the band launched into “Beat and the Pulse.” The crowd didn’t explode so much as bloom movement spreading outward in waves, hands lifting, bodies swaying harder, the room pulsing like a single organism. Stelmanis leaned into the darker edges of the song, her voice slicing through the mix with a ferocity that felt almost ritualistic. It was the kind of performance that reminds you why Austra has remained a singular force in electronic music for over a decade: the ability to make something that feels both intimate and enormous, personal and political, fragile and unbreakable.

The encore closed with “Hurt Me Now,” and as the lights came up, the room felt different softer, quieter, like everyone had been temporarily transported somewhere colder and more beautiful before being dropped back into the January night. After nearly a decade since that night at the old Crocodile, seeing her again felt like a gift. And with Chin Up, Buttercup marking her return after a five‑year silence, it’s clear that 2026 might be Austra’s most compelling chapter yet.