Mon Laferte does not make music for the middle of the room. The Chilean-Mexican singer, songwriter, and producer built her name on genre refusal, moving through bolero, cumbia, indie rock, ranchera, and blues across nine studio albums without settling into any of them for long. Today she released her latest project on those terms: a five-track visual live EP titled "Spotify Sessions" EQUAL Edition, recorded alongside an all-female jazz ensemble and centered on the title track of her current album, "Femme Fatale."

Born Norma Monserrat Bustamante Laferte in Viña del Mar, Chile, Laferte has accumulated five Latin Grammy Awards, more than any other Chilean artist in history, along with three Grammy nominations. Her 2015 breakout "Tu Falta de Querer" made her a household name, and the 2017 follow-up "Amárrame" with Juanes won Best Alternative Song at the Latin Grammys. She has since spent years methodically dismantling the pin-up image that came with that success. "Femme Fatale," her ninth studio album, blends jazz-inflected arrangements, bolero undertones, and nostalgic pop textures across 14 tracks written entirely by Laferte. The Ticket Blog

Mon Laferte Brings "Femme Fatale" Into the Studio Live

The "Spotify Sessions" EQUAL Edition captures five tracks from that album in an intimate studio setting, stripping the production back to a quartet of musicians: Reona Sugimoto on drums, Patricia "Pilla" Reyes on piano, Marie Anne Greenham on double bass, and Maria Grant on saxophone. The result is a visual EP as much as an audio one, with each performance filmed as part of the release package.

The focus track, also titled "Femme Fatale," puts the archetype front and center. In the session, Laferte leans into the noir glamour, lounge textures, and emotional volatility that define the album's aesthetic, delivering what the release describes as a stripped-down interpretation built around the strength and vulnerability of her current era. The choice to build the sessions around an all-female ensemble is deliberate given the program context, placing the performance inside a conversation about who gets to hold instruments in a recording studio, not just who stands at the microphone. Live Nation Newsroom

Spotify EQUAL and the Industry Gap Behind It

The project lands within Spotify's EQUAL program, which the streaming platform launched in March 2021. EQUAL was built in response to a disparity Spotify identified through its own research: at the time of the program's launch, only one in five artists on the charts were women. Since launching, the program has grown to cover 184 markets and has generated more than 13 million hours of listening across its featured artists. Now five years into its run, EQUAL has expanded from a dedicated platform space into a program that operates in cities, on stages, and in studios. iMusician + 2

Laferte, who signed with Sony US Latin after departing Universal, fits the EQUAL brief in more than name. Her output across nine albums has been largely self-written and frequently self-produced, and her recent work has pushed deeper into jazz and experimental territory rather than toward commercial accessibility. "Femme Fatale" earned her a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album and appeared on year-end lists at outlets tracking the evolution of Latin music as a category.

The "Spotify Sessions" release arrives two weeks before the launch of presales for her Femme Fatale Tour, a 28-date North American run promoted by Live Nation. The tour kicks off July 24 at the Place Bell in Laval, Quebec, and closes November 7 at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles, with stops in Austin, Miami, Detroit, and New York along the way. The EP gives listeners something to sit with before the live show arrives, and it reframes the album as material that can hold up in a room without production scaffolding. For an artist who has spent fifteen years refusing to become a caricature of herself, that turns out to be the point. Live Nation Newsroom