Kelela brings her new avatar live world tour to House of Blues Houston on Thursday, September 17. She arrives six weeks after new avatar — her fifth full-length project and third album on Warp Records — drops on July 10. That timing means Houston gets the real release-tour version: not a warm-up, not a retrospective run, but an artist presenting new material she wants you to know.
About Kelela
D.C.-raised and New York-based, Kelela Mizanekristos has been working the seam between contemporary R&B and electronic music since her 2013 mixtape Cut 4 Me on Fade to Mind. The Hallucinogen EP in 2015 launched her Warp Records partnership — Warp being the label built on artists who refuse the lane-stay rule. Take Me Apart (2017) entered the Billboard 200 and reached the top three on the UK R&B chart. Raven (2023) landed at 86 on Metacritic — universal acclaim territory, the kind of score where the critics actually agreed with each other.
new avatar extends the project further. Warp describes it as “R&B run through distorted guitar living alongside new intersections in dance music” — a sound Kelela calls one “that pulls from everywhere she has ever lived musically.” The album features PinkPantheress, A.K. Paul, and Fousheé, and the third single “point blank” — produced by Oscar Scheller — addresses emotional labor and misogynoir without softening the terms. This is Kelela’s first major multinational tour in years; the Houston date sits inside a full run spanning North America, Europe, and the UK through November.
House of Blues Houston
House of Blues Houston sits at 1204 Caroline Street in Midtown and serves as the city’s primary touring R&B and soul stop. The venue holds 1,800. This is an all-ages show; box office and doors open at 6:00 PM with showtime at 7:00 PM.
Tickets
Tickets are available via Ticketmaster. Public on-sale is underway. For more Houston concert listings, browse our full regional calendar.