Poppy's musical evolution continues in Pittsburgh concert

The evolution of the musical artist known as Poppy continues, with Pittsburgh getting to see the latest iteration Saturday night.

Poppy’s They’re All Around Us tour proved aptly named, as the lower floor at the Roxian Theatre in McKees Rocks felt tightly packed, with the rest of the venue crowded, too.

The genre-hopping musician/performance artist has bounced between pop, metal, techno and more over her career, but metal seems more prevalent nowadays. She was the first female solo nominee for best metal performance at the Grammys back in 2021, and her team-up with Knocked Loose on “Suffocate” also was nominated at the 2025 Grammys.

Her latest release, “Negative Spaces,” leans that way, too, with the album featuring heavily in Saturday’s show, with nine of the 15 songs played. Six others came from 2020’s “I Disagree” with another from the 2019 EP “Choke” and one cover.

Equally comfortable going from a song that sounds like it belongs as an anime theme song (“Concrete”) to a throat-ripping rocker (“the center’s falling out”) to a dance track (“crystallized”), Poppy also seemed more at ease with her stage presence. At times, she marched, twirled and did little jigs, offering smiles as she stomped around the stage in combat boots. Her performance focused solely on singing — after playing bass in her most recent Roxian show in 2023 — leaving her three masked musicians to handle all those duties. (Poppy also opened for Avenged Sevenfold at PPG Paints Arena last year.)

Other highlights included her rapid-fire lyrical delivery on “V.A.N.” — from her collaboration with Bad Omens — as well as songs that let her unleash her screams like “the cost of giving up” or a multi-faceted song like “Scary Mask, which veered between manic pop energy and her darker, rock side.

After dipping into a curtained keyhole — like she did after every song — for a brief encore break, Poppy and her band returned to close out the night with two bangers — “they’re all around us,” which had her hair whipping, and “new way out,” where she tried to get a mosh pit going. In the dense floor, it didn’t work out as well as it would in a larger venue, which will probably be on the horizon the next time she’s in Pittsburgh as her star continues to shine brighter.

In addition to music, Poppy, who initially broke out as a YouTuber, is back to her roots with “Improbably Poppy,” a satirical variety show that originated on Veeps and is making its way to YouTube.

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The Los Angeles-based duo Kumo 99 opened the show with about a half hour of electronic hardcore music, with the throbbing bass leading to bobbing heads. On the floor, the vocals were difficult to discern, made even more challenging with all the lyrics in Japanese.