Big Star

2008 | Folk, Rock

“Break through it with your power, and do whatever the fuck you want. Be whoever the fuck you want.”

Daytime: A Soap Opera Musical (Official Cast Recording)

2019 | Soundtrack

“I think a lot of people went in with low expectations, because ‘original local musical’ is a scary phrase. And now we do an original show every single year, it kind of became a hallmark of the company.”

The Wake Singers

2021 | Rock

“To be in The Wake Singers, it’s a choice to live a fulfilled life doing what I love. It’s all about just following that dream that I’ve had, and that my cousins have had, of just making our music and getting it out there, and hoping that people like it, hoping that Native people, Native youth, are inspired to follow their own goals, follow their own dreams, and see that it’s possible.“

The Path I Chose to Walk

2021 | Folk

“Being a professional musician is not for anyone who doesn't absolutely love music, because when it all gets put in the wash, you definitely could easily get compensated more for your time pretty easily.“

Ghost Plant (2021) / TAKU SNI (2022)

Hip-Hop

“So all of the songs then are kind of talking about being nobody, coming from nothing, seeing things as nothing, nobody can tell me otherwise. But at the same time, I come from nowhere and I'm proud of that. I'm stronger because I'm nobody. I'm treated like nobody, so why not be the nobody and make that a hero?”

Deserted

2021 | Pop, Rock

“Your ability to do new things, and to make waves, and to have an impact in a growing city like Sioux Falls is exponential to other places. And also, I say this all the time, but like, if not us, then who?.”

Journey to the Spirit World

1983 | Country

“A lot of the things I write about are real country, they are about the hard times. If anybody in this world can sing about the hard times, an Indian can, because we’ve been there, and in a lot of ways are still there. Things that happened to us centuries ago, a few hundred years ago, are still happening, are reality.”

Blue Mind

2021 | Rock

“Honest to god, if you would have said, ‘Pierre music scene’ in 1988 I would have tipped over backwards laughing. There was so far from a music scene, unless you count country music live at The Longbranch on the weekend. And I’m not discrediting that, it’s just we had no access to that as kids. So you build it, right? You’re interested in music so you start a band.”

Public Enemy

2020 | Hip Hop

“It’s hard to be a Native and live in contemporary culture, because everybody wants you to do something they seen in a Western. It’s hard to do something contemporary. Shoutout to everybody who involves themselves in contemporary culture in a good way, or whatever people perceive as a bad way, shoutout to them.”

Drums, Bells, and Whistles

2016 | Classical

“And then the best pedal of all is the drums and bells. That is attached to a mallet which hits the soundboard on the underside of the piano, so that makes the drum. And then there are three hammers inside these concentric bells inside piano itself, so that strikes at the same time [as the drum], although you can just do the bells if you touch the pedal lightly enough. But yeah, that’s a lot of fun.”

Water Music

2020 | Jazz

“In that set was a song called “Black Snake” which I had written a couple years back while in Iceland watching [on TV] the water protectors from Standing Rock up in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. The Dakota Access [Pipeline] protests. That song that we played as a trio, along with the story, got the most crowd engagement, and reaction, and response than anything else that we played for the entire tour, every single night.”

Meadowlark

2020 | Indigenous

“Your voice is something that belongs to the people. It’s going to be there for the people, and when you’re called to sing it’s an honor. When you’re called to sing it’s almost like your duty and your service. Sometimes it’s very heavy, because you’re singing for maybe somebody who’s having a hard time, somebody who’s mourning, somebody who needs encouragement. You know, maybe they need a prayer.”

coming around

2019 | Rock

“People try and break people down, and I’m like, ‘Go ahead. Whatever. Go ahead and break me, it doesn’t matter, because you’re going to build yourself back up. So go ahead and do it, because you can’t break me.’”

Something to Burn

2019 | Metal

“In a couple songs it talks about a hundred years ago a witch released a demon onto the town, and she spends a hundred years searching for the lost souls of the town. They don’t fit in and they have an inkling that something isn’t right here. She’s leading them back to where something went down, to her home, and she is begging for them to know that there’s so much more than this, that you don’t have to let the troubles of this town wear you down, you don’t have to let it consume you.”

Pleasure

2021 | Hip Hop, Pop

“I think Flying Lotus said it, he was like, ‘You gotta make one body of work that’s yours.’ You know, that you made everything. So I went in with that intention of, like, ‘I’m going to do everything front to back.’”

Boldly Expressive! (2000)

Feminissimo! (2008)

Classical

“One of the comments that came out of one of the faculty members was, ‘Really? There are all these women who have written pieces for violin and piano? Are they any good?’ It was clear he was thinking, ‘Wow! I didn’t know women could write music.’”

the mog (2020)

on a holiday run (2021)

Folk, Rock

“It is freeing to just say, ‘fuck it,’ and learn to play your own music rather than learning to play other people’s.”

The Little Scene on the Prairie

2021 | Rock

“But that coffee shop was called JoeHouse Espresso Café, run by Max Fjelstad, it was on 3rd Street downtown [Brookings], that was really kind of the central hub of the scene, and it was kind of the hangout, it was just a cool place. A really cool place.”

Eric Holm

2019 | Country

“So when we started out at Lake Poinsett, and it was all these older folks… and we had served them ice cream, and it was very homey and very friendly, and I was like, ‘Okay! We’re going to get ready to begin!’ and then it was like, ‘Muslims and trans people deserve to sit with us at the Jesus table,’ there was an interesting quality of everyone, like, listening but also, like, ‘What did we get ourselves into?’“

GOD$ AMONG U$

2016 | Hip Hop

“I really wanted to spit bars because people in the indigenous hip hop scene all were saying, ‘I’m the best rapper,’ and nobody’s on my level. So I wanted to prove to people, ‘No, no. I’m the best. I spit. I’m the best rapper.’ Kind of my little challenge to everyone else.”