Mon Laferte is set to bring her Femme Fatale tour to San Jose's SAP Center on Friday at 8 p.m., a show billed as her only Bay Area date. The Chilean-born Mexican pop star arrives behind a sprawling new double album and a career built on repeatedly bouncing back from setbacks that once threatened to end it before it started.
A Double Album Years in the Making
Laferte released Femme Fatale Vol. 2 on June 12, a double album that, according to MarinIJ, leaps across genres, moods and instrumental settings. The record follows Femme Fatale, which came out late in 2025 and was hailed as one of that year's best Latin albums, per the same report. The Los Angeles Times describes the new volume's 20 tracks as ricocheting from in-your-face punk dissonance to majestic broken-heart dirges, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Laferte has said she wrote all the Femme Fatale music during the same stretch of sessions, with both records drawn from that same writing period, the Los Angeles Times reports. She told the paper she picked the jazz-oriented tracks for the first volume and left everything else for part two. Billboard reports Laferte said she rescued writings and melodies from as far back as 2016 while assembling the new collection, according to Billboard.
Billboard describes Femme Fatale Vol. 2 as Laferte's tenth studio project, while the Los Angeles Times calls it her eleventh studio album — the two outlets disagree on the exact count. Laferte told Billboard that the new record feels more like a singer-songwriter album than its predecessor, calling it much more eclectic.
From Street Corners to Reality TV
Laferte, born Monserrat Bustamante, grew up near Santiago, Chile, and was bullied after changing schools as a child, the East Bay Times reports. She began singing on street corners as a teenager before gaining attention on the Chilean reality-TV competition Rojo, where she spent four years, according to East Bay Times. She went on to release her debut studio album, La Chica de Rojo, before moving to Mexico City in 2007.
It was just as her career was gaining traction in Mexico City that Laferte was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, per the same report. She has said the thyroid surgery that followed posed a risk to her voice, telling Billboard she wrote one song around age 26, right after the operation. She has also openly discussed managing bipolar disorder, the East Bay Times notes.
Grammy Recognition and Creative Range
Laferte's 2015 album Mon Laferte, Vol. 1 led to an MTV award for her single Tu Falta De Querer and two Latin Grammy nominations. She later won a Latin Grammy for Amárrame, a single featuring Colombian rock star Juanes, and her critically hailed 2017 album La Trenza garnered three more nominations, according to the same reporting.
Beyond music, Laferte is described as a Chilean political activist and visual artist whose paintings were featured in the solo exhibit Gestos at the Museum of Mexico City. In an interview with Ernesto Lechner cited by the East Bay Times, she said writing songs is one of the things she loves most about being alive.
Her catalog spans languages and collaborations: she recorded a handful of songs in English for her 2021 album 1940 Carmen, which she wrote while undergoing successful fertility treatment in Los Angeles. She also recorded a Spanish-language version of Metallica's Nothing Else Matters as part of a project marking the 30th anniversary of the band's Black Album.
Friday's concert marks her sole scheduled stop in the Bay Area, with JamBase also listing the SAP Center date on its concert calendar.
