hip hop

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SECRET RIVERS is me on vocals, and SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE on both vocals and production. We’ve both been around forever, but this duo project is something new. Beyond that, we both live in the Twin Cities. Spring Is Coming is our first release as a duo, and it is very much about where we live, and about this moment: a season of occupation and brutality, but also a season of resistance and solidarity.

This release is also a fundraiser, with all proceeds going to the Neighbors Helping Neighbors Twin Cities ICE Relief Fund. Listen and/or download here:

My own writing has been the furthest thing from my mind these past few months, but spite and stubbornness can work as fuel as much as anything else. A couple quick notes on my contributions to this project:

  • Worthy of the Stone: We wrote this song in the Fall of 2025 over an instrumental track from the TV show Andor (the beat that plays when Mon Mothma spins around in circles). We liked the song too much for it to be a mixtape-style throwaway track, so SMP remixed it with an original beat. You can still find us performing the original version here, though.
  • One Does Not Simply Walk Into Minnesota actually started out as a remix of a very old Guante & Big Cats song, A Pragmatist’s Guide to Revolution. While re-recording the vocals, though, I decided to rewrite a few lines, which turned into rewriting basically the whole song. This one better reflects where I am right now.
  • Let Your Heart Be a Whistle is something I wrote back in December of 2025. The audio is pulled from a live performance at an UNIDOS fundraiser at the Loft Literary Center here in MPLS.

Book us for your mutual aid fundraiser, benefit show, or other event – contact me here.

Continue reading “Secret Rivers: SPRING IS COMING (new music + virtual release show)”

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Find even more resources for creative troublemakers here.

I’ve shared a lot of more serious content lately, from my thoughts on the upcoming mayoral election here in MPLS, to my new asynchronous class exploring political poetry, to this call for more anti-ICE art and media. Here’s something a little more informal and fun.

SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE and I wrote a song over that song that plays in Andor when Mon Mothma is spinning around in circles. The original track is called “Niamos! (Morlana Club Mix)” by Nicholas Britell (and I know, there are various mixes and remixes out there but that one was the base).

This is only going to be available as a live performance (and the in-studio video below) because it’s not like we can release it as an actual single. But here it is:

Thanks for listening. There will be more SECRET RIVERS soon. In the meantime, check out our conversation here!

a still from a video with the text "worthy of the stone" plus a SMP and KTM performing live in-studio.

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This year was bad! But good work happens during bad years too. As is tradition: a few highlights from 2024, for people who are interested in what I do but may have missed something here or there.

photo of KTM/Guante performing at the Target Center in MPLS, surrounded by thousands of people.

Target Center performance + Grammy (!?)

It’s a long story, but as you may know, I’m on two songs by producer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Fred Again. This year, I got to perform one of those songs, “Kyle (i found you),” with Fred during his MPLS tour stop at the Target Center. Absolutely surreal; that’s what the photo above is from. The other song, “Berwyn (all that I got is you),” is on Fred’s album “Actual Life 3,” which won the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Music Album back in February.

My friends try to tell me I should just go ahead and say that I’m “a Grammy-winning artist” since I’m a writer/performer on the album, but the humble midwesterner in me is going to run with “appears on a Grammy-winning album.” Either way, it’s kind of cool and not something I ever expected to happen.

Continue reading “2024 recap: New album, Target Center performance, Grammy (kind of), zines, videos, and more”

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Surprise. The first new Guante & Big Cats album in over five years.

THE OFFICIAL BLURB: ‘All Dressed Up, No Funeral’ is a concept album about the climate crisis. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bunch of songs about trees or the importance of recycling—decorated indie Hip Hop duo Guante & Big Cats have crafted a furious, laser-focused rebuke to doomsaying, “abandon your posts”-style cynicism. This is an album about how while it is naive to believe that victory is inevitable, it is equally naive to believe that victory is impossible. It’s about how collective action can be healing, how grief can be a superpower, and how hope can—and often must—have sharp edges. 

Continue reading “All Dressed Up, No Funeral: Guante & Big Cats’ climate crisis concept album”

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A few highlights from 2023, for people who are interested in my work but may have missed something here or there. It was a bit of a “between-projects” year for me (though I did mark the one-year anniversary of my book by making a section available to read online here), on top of the fact that self-promo has been the furthest thing from my mind over the last three months, but here are some links.

a photo of KTM projected onto a big screen at the Lollapalooza festival.
Text: "five notes for artists and musicians who want to speak out about Palestine but aren't sure how"
a photo (by Aaron Vincent Facundo) of KTM speaking at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Continue reading “In Case You Missed It: 2023 Recap (and 2024 Booking)”

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New music! 10 emcees, singers, poets, DJs & producers from 3 states RUNNING AMOK.

I’m excited to share this new project, helmed by production duo Scum & Villainy (two longtime friends and collaborators, SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE and Rube); I’m featured on six of the seventeen tracks, and it was so much fun to just share some verses (and a poem) and see how they ended up contributing to the actual songs.

The whole album is beautiful, in that it’s intentionally chaotic. The soundscapes, the multiple voices, the concepts—it all adds up to something that reminds me of my own entry point into Hip Hop: deeply collaborative, off-kilter, against-the-grain music from acts like Goodie Mob, Wu-Tang, De La Soul, and beyond. Not that this actually sounds anything like those groups, haha; it’s more about the spirit of it.

Get it on Bandcamp, and/or stream it wherever you listen to music.

A few personal highlights:

  • From track 3: We pledge allegiance to no nation, only the land underneath it / The reason, the culture that we breathe in / No banners, borders, or binaries to believe in…
  • From track 6: Now I’m full hearts, new mission before me / Future’s so bright we’re forced to share a photosensitivity warning…
  • From track 12: They put the pedal to the metal and were gone, runnin’ free / But me, I’d rather meddle in some petals like a honey bee / And stay rooted and in tune with the hive / That scum and villainy vibe, that criminal life / of rhythm and rhyme when powers that be want want us to shut up / We use the power of bees, like buzz buzz buzz / Best line I ever wrote / won’t be taking questions, the comment section’s closed…
  • Also, tracks 4 and 9 feature reworked versions of poems from my book.
Ladies and gentlemen, friends of ALL genders: Welcome to the year of no surrender - guante
press any button to begin as long as it’s not skip Let’s clip through every wall, every border Our allegiance is to the bugs not the bosses Player one take no losses, and give no quarter - guante
this is a love song, a death rattle, a battle cry this is the ugly truth instead of a beautiful lie this is the point of the performance: they want us to forget it but fire is the language we were born with - guante

Thanks to everyone checking it out. More new music on the way…

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Why does this apocalypse feel so familiar?

New song, our first in five years! Get it wherever you listen to music (spotify, apple music, etc.), or right here. ***UPDATE: We’ve moved the link to this song to our NEW (2024) album; here it is:***

Official Blurb: In 2018, Minneapolis-based duo Guante & Big Cats released War Balloons, an album of anthemic, explicitly political, sci-fi-tinged indie Hip Hop. To mark the five-year anniversary of that project (and its reintroduction to streaming services after being missing for a time), they’re releasing an “extended version” featuring a brand new track, Roguelike.

Quick, somewhat related note: If you’re reading this post today (Saturday, June 17, 2023), come see me perform at the Stone Arch Bridge Festival tonight in Minneapolis. It won’t be a G&BC set, but I’ll be sharing poems and songs over See More Perspective’s live production. 6-7pm on the Cities 97 stage.

an album cover: purple jellyfish float in a dark sky over a nondescript horizon. The text reads "guante & big cats: war balloons (extended)"
a square featuring the text "roguelike: guante & big cats" plus an image of a person at the end of a dark tunnel.
Continue reading “Guante & Big Cats: ROGUELIKE (plus revisiting the War Balloons album)”

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There is no light at the end of this tunnel/ so it’s a good thing we brought matches.

I haven’t released any music of my own since 2018’s “War Balloons” with Big Cats (although I did appear on those two Fred Again songs; find them here). Surprise! Here’s something new, a remix of “Matches.”

This is a piece of writing that has meant a lot to me over the years, the closest thing I have to a personal manifesto. It was originally part of a side project, so I’ve pretty much always performed just my own parts solo (often a capella), and had wanted to build a solo version of the song out of that for a long time. I guess good things take time, because Dave Olson is a musician I’ve liked and respected for 20 years (!) now; someone who was part of the very first community of artists that ever nurtured me, and it really feels special to collaborate with him on this song. Hope you like it.

Listen via: Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple Music

Music, Mixing, and Artwork by Dave Olson
Words by Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre
Vocals Recorded by SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE at Luv ‘n’ Dedication Studio, St. Paul, MN

a child in silhouette against a city skyline, holding up a large match.
Continue reading “Matches (Olson Remix)”