Khruangbin Bubbles and Grooves in San Francisco

Khruangbin | The Regency Ballroom | November 22nd, 2025 – photos by Gabriel David Barkin

Khruangbin. (Pronounced “KRUNG-bin”) That’s Thai for airplane. Have you boarded yet? They’re taking off.

Guitarist and vocalist Mark Speer told a reporter in 2018 that if they had the foresight to predict the band’s success, he and his bandmates Laura Lee Ochoa (bass and vocals) and Donald “DJ” Johnson (drums) might not have chosen a name that was so difficult to pronounce. Based on the audience in attendance at the first of two house-packing appearances in San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom this past weekend, the name hasn’t slowed down their ascendance one bit.

The Houston-based trio, accompanied on stage by Will Van Horn (keyboards, steel guitar, and percussion), is currently touring in celebration of the tenth anniversary of their debut album The Universe Smiles Upon You. They’ve actually been around since 2012 – and ironically (due to the peculiarities of the Recording Academy) were nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy in 2025.

Speer told Relix in 2020 that the band had a plan from the start. “We wanted to have a formula. It’s like, ‘This is what we do, and we’re not gonna try and go outside the box too much. We’re gonna explore the box we’re in.’”

For over a decade now, Khruangbin has explored that box and found it full of ideas, creativity, and expansiveness. If you need a name for the genre, call it downbeat semi-ethno swing and swagger. Or techno jamband trip-hop instrumental. A New York Times reporter once described it as “the sound you hear inside a lava lamp.” Hard to beat that one, but I’ll give it a whirl:

• This is what bubbles sound like. Languidly-drifting bubbles, off in the distance and blurry, like heat waves above a desert plain. They never pop. They just … float on.
• It’s the soundtrack to one of those surf movies where all the shots are in slo-mo. Super-duper slo-mo. It takes three minutes for one wave to rise and crash while some uber-cool surfer covered in tattoos glides in the curl, her hand tracing her name on the inner wall of the watery tube.
• Sometimes Khruangbin sounds like they’re the “Space” jam at a Dead show, the part just as it begins to pick up a rhythm and the band is coalescing towards a recognizable song. There you are in the echoey hallway coming back from the bathroom, and you hear it; are they going into “The Wheel”?

The crowd was a mix of post-hippie ravers, San Francisco über-techies, and Gen X parents out on date night. Almost everyone appeared to be between 30 and 45 years old. It felt like there was a high percentage of people young enough to know how to manipulate TikTok algorithms for maximum virality but old enough to be disturbed by the stupidity of all those kids yelling “6-7” at their teachers.

Up on stage, a spread of knick-knacks and odd items were laid out in front of the drum kit and keyboards. The most prominent item was a handmade sign that said, “Yes this is the third grade!” and signed by everyone in some third-grade class. A string of individual cards made by each of those third graders stretched out to the side of the sign.

Other items included:

• A Zionsville pennant (apparently from a small town in Indiana)
• A pair of gold boots.
• Several empty bottles of wine.
• A framed black and white photo of a bull.
• Four colorful pointy party hats.
• A KTRU radio sticker (that’s the station at Rice University in Houston).
• A small CD boom box.
• A large cowbell.
• A framed, faded closeup of a cat’s face.

For their 90-minute set, Speer and Ochoa wore their trademark black wigs. Hers had bejeweled butterfly pins. They moved slowly around the stage, each mostly keeping to the side between their respective amplifiers and mic stands but occasionally walking slowly toward each other to mirror each other’s movements for a few beats before drifting back to their own quadrant. At one point, they came to the front of the stage and knelt in reverence for their audience during one particularly lively jam.

A single set seems too short. This is the kind of music that begs for a two-set jamband experience.

Some of the songs have hints of Afrobeat. Others have a Middle Eastern scent. Did I hear some southeast Asian pop riffs? Is that a reggae beat? No, wait, now it’s lilting along like a good ol’ country song. Are we back in Houston? Hello, Mission Control, is this thing on?

Somehow, it’s all Khruangbin.

So what songs did they play? I don’t fucking know, sorry. I recognized a few from their records, but I don’t know them well enough to name them. They’re mostly instrumentals, and I didn’t get a look at the setlist. But it was all cool shit. It felt like the pace picked up as the show went on, starting off the show with ambient stuff and building to some 120 BPM rock toward the end. Well-paced all in all. It never got boring and the rail riders (who may or may not know all the song titles) were grooving all night. I’ll bet some of them even came back for seconds on Sunday.

Overheard while I was leaving the show: “The bass was so fucking loud. But I got used to it after a while.” She was all smiles.

Shannon Shaw, who leads the doo-wop retro band Shannon and the Clams, opened the show with a performance accompanied by violin, keys, and guitar. Shaw played bass and sang originals with a sweet voice that veered between lanes from Mama Cass Elliot to Darlene Love. She closed with a cover of INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart” in honor of the anniversary of the death of Michael Hutchence.