Chilean singer Mon Laferte releases double album "Femme Fatale Vol. 2"

Chilean singer-songwriter Mon Laferte, a fixture of the Latin alternative scene since her breakout 2015 album "Mon Laferte, Vol. 1," released her eleventh studio album, the double LP "Femme Fatale Vol. 2," on June 12, just eight months after its predecessor. The 20-track record ranges from in-your-face punk to majestic broken-heart ballads, a duet with St. Vincent, rootsy folk interludes and farfisa-rich lounge, all anchored on a near-orchestral soundstage, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The speed of the follow-up wasn't really a follow-up at all. "I'm cheating a little, because both records were part of the same sessions," Laferte told the Times. She said she wrote roughly 50 songs while working on 2025's "Femme Fatale," picked the jazz-oriented tracks for that first volume, and set the rest aside for "Vol. 2." One of the album's longest songs, "No Le Regales Tu Corazón," came to her at 4:30 a.m. while she was working on something else; she grabbed a guitar and finished it in two hours without going back to sleep.

That same restlessness shows up in how wildly the album's styles swing. "Tal Vez Yo Soy El Problema" is deliberately short and punky, "For Your Consideration" builds a free-jazz feel around an upright bass, and "A Pesar De Ti Y De Mí" chases the epic sweep of a 1960s Bond theme, with Laferte citing Whitney Houston as a reference point while recording it. "I wanted to prove that I could do whatever I wanted," she said of the record's range.

Laferte, 43, has been open about living with bipolar disorder and how it feeds her songwriting. "I do experience some manic phases from time to time, where I can't stop doing things like painting or writing songs," she told the Times, adding that therapy and motherhood keep her grounded between them. She traced her singing voice back to being bullied as a child after changing schools and later busking on street corners, where she noticed her voice "was naturally potent" enough to cut through traffic noise. That same directness, she said, is what connects her to the roughly 6 million people who follow her on Instagram: "I've always felt misunderstood. I was always weird, and never felt cool."

Laferte will bring the album to the Kia Forum for two nights in November, a booking few Latin American artists land at that venue. She lives in Mexico and was vacationing in Paris with her family when she spoke with the Times about the record.