Deep blue lights illuminated the stage against the backdrop of a red curtain that opened up to a sky of purple clouds.

“Denver!” A low, raspy voice shouted to the crowd, eliciting loud cheers from the audience.

The bright strum of an electric guitar rang through the room. The upbeat melody of a synth soon joined the sound and two band members started jumping up and down on stage to the beat. 

Moments later the percussive hit of the drums joined in and The Linda Lindas launched into their first song of the night, “Gotta Get Out.”

“Here we all are together to enjoy music!” The Linda Lindas guitarist Lucia de la Garza told the crowd about halfway through the concert.

California-native punk band The Linda Lindas performed at Summit Music Hall last Wednesday with Denver-native pop punk band Capture This and Minneapolis-based punk rock band VIAL as openers. 

The Linda Lindas originally formed in 2018, consisting of members Eloise Wong on bass, Lucia de la Garza and Bela Salazar on guitar and Mila de la Garza on drums. All four members perform vocals. 

The group started off as a cover band, just playing for fun, before rock band Bikini Kill’s lead singer Kathleen Hanna saw them cover their song “Rebel Girl” and invited them to open for Bikini Kill at the Hollywood Palladium in 2019. In 2021, the band played a personal concert at the Los Angeles Public Library, where they played their song “Racist, Sexist Boy,” which ended up going viral. 

This concert is a part of their longest headline tour yet. The “Gotta Get Out Tour,” started in Sacramento, Calif. on Sept. 16 and ends in Tucson, Ariz. on Nov. 5. 

The crowd’s boisterous energy persisted throughout the night, engaging with the bands by clapping their hands to the beat, belting out the lyrics, cheering loudly after songs and dancing or swaying to the music. 

Eon Claire, a 22-year-old fan who discovered The Linda Lindas last May, said they love going to concerts because of the live music.

“I just love hearing live music,” Claire said. “I think it is so different from listening to it on a streaming service. There’s always so much different energy behind it.”

Claire enjoys going to concerts in smaller venues like Summit Music Hall, which holds a few hundred people in the main concert area, because it’s much more intimate. The crowd energy tends to be better because it’s more insulated and most of the people attend because they genuinely want to be there unlike with some larger crowds in bigger venues. 

“I think that has made it difficult for people who do like the music to get tickets or to have a good experience, especially because the crowd just isn’t as good, or because people are just filming the whole thing,” Claire said.

Throughout the concert, only a handful of people held up their phones to film and they only did so for short periods of time. Claire hopes that people will eventually shy away from feeling the need to record the concert and just let themselves be in the moment. 

“I feel like when I take videos at concerts, I feel like I never even go back and watch it,” Claire said. “It’s kind of like, oh, I have to film this, but I have no purpose for it.”

Multiple fans said their favorite part of the concert is simply having fun and connecting with a group of people who are there to enjoy the same music as them.

“I can see hundreds, maybe even more, of people who don’t know each other and don’t know if they have things in common. But for that one night, the common thing they have together is the love of the music and the love of the live music experience,” said concert photographer Aja Renee.

Along with performing, Wong said his favorite part of playing shows is getting to see other artists perform and supporting them. Wong loves to play “Nothing Left” and “Blood On Our Hands” because it gives people the opportunity to think about issues that affect the world.

Several fans said they really loved The Linda Lindas confidence on stage and how they’re able to keep up a high energy level throughout the entire performance.

Kate Sedor, who’s 35 and has been a fan of The Linda Lindas for nearly six years, was deeply impressed by how confident and sure of themselves for how young they were. The band members were between eight and 12 at the time they started performing.

“It is so wild to me because when I was growing up, I don’t think I ever felt that comfortable in my own skin until I hit my 20’s,” Sedor said.

Sedor saw the band open for punk rock band Green Day in 2024 at Coors Field.

“They were not shy. They were not nervous. They were just like we’re here to have a great time and play music,” Sedor said.

The crowd at Summit Music Hall consisted of a variety of ages, from pre-teens to middle-aged adults, and was roughly half male and half female.

“I think it’s really cool for me to see they’re music cutting across age groups and gender and everything,” Sedor said. “It’s very awesome.”

Throughout the concert, the band played a majority of the songs from their newest album “Gotta Get Out,” which came out in 2026. This includes “Closer,” “Everybody Told Me” and “Burning Out,” which are listed as their top three most popular songs on Spotify.

The setlist also consisted of two songs from their 2024 album “No Obligation” and five songs from their 2022 album “Growing Up,” including their first big hit “Racist, Sexist Boy.”

When the band started out, their music followed that typical punk sound, but their music has become more experimental and expansive by diving into more genres like emo and pop punk without losing the “countercultural core of it,” Sedor said.

As a fan who’s been listening to the band since 2020, when the band was first getting big, Sedor said she really liked hearing the evolution of their music. She liked how the band is differentiating each album.

For their new album, Wong said the band wrote the songs together in the same room during their school break. This is different from their previous albums where they learned to write songs separately over the COVID-19 pandemic, when they didn’t have access to each other.

The band members pull from different music influences. Wong listens to hardcore punk and the others listen to more indie and latin music. The band makes a point to not confine themselves to one thing, according to Wong.

“We end up writing things that we wouldn’t have written on our own because we all pulled from such different influences, and I think that makes it really fun,” Wong said.

The concert buzzed with excitement from the fans of both The Linda Lindas as well as Capture This and VIAL throughout the night. The bands brought infectious energy with their active stage presence and vibrant music that ranged from pop to rock to punk that left fans wanting more.