Annie Kuchenmeister was 16 years old when she and her sister, 11-year-old Nissa, formed the South Minneapolis band Loki’s Folly in 2017.
With Annie on guitar and Nissa on drums, the duo started the band out of their love of Green Day and My Chemical Romance. But it was Minneapolis’ own, the Replacements, that was perhaps the duo’s biggest influence.
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“We were just like, ‘Oh my god, this is amazing. I have to be like these people,’” says Annie, who’s sitting in her bedroom, a Trainspotting poster she got from Goodwill plastered on the wall next to her. “Our mom had suggested we try getting into the Replacements, since they were local artists. And it was extra special. It was like, wow, they’re from here, we’re from here. They could do this. We can do anything.”
The siblings drew inspiration for their band’s name from Loki, the god of mischief, who commits a series of tricks or follies that ultimately bring about the destruction of the gods, known as Ragnarök, in Norse mythology.
Annie says that Tom Hiddleston’s portrayal of the character in the MCU played a significant role as well.
Eventually, their younger brother, Oskar, who’s now 14, joined as bassist to complete the group, which, according to them, plays loud music that makes them happy.
Loki’s Folly started playing shows at Twin Town Guitars, where Annie and Nissa took music lessons prior to starting the band. They then began playing for wider audiences at Open Streets Minneapolis, the city’s regularly occurring street fair. The siblings built a local following, including longtime Minneapolis favorites Haley, Gramma’s Boyfriend, the Melismatics, and Ryan Smith of Soul Asylum, who was the sisters’ teacher at Twin Town.
“He really championed our music, championed us,” says Annie. “He was talking to Dave Pirner and was like, ‘I should get you out to see them. I think you’d like their music.’ And so he came to see us opening for Haley, which is, in my opinion, another local legend. I love her. So that show alone was exciting. And he came out to see us at that show, and we talked after. And he was just very excited about the music, and he felt it was a continuation of the old-school Minneapolis scene.”
In fact, Pirner liked Loki’s Folly so much that he invited them to play at Soul Asylum’s 2018 holiday show at Minneapolis’s First Avenue venue.
As the band gained more traction in the Minneapolis music scene, Loki’s Folly released three singles—“The Love Song,” “Truth or Dare,” and “No Right”— that would eventually be included on their debut album, Sisu.
“That was our starting point, our first recording experience, and that was amazing,” says Annie.
To record the rest of the album, Annie, Nissa, and Oskar participated in a free recording day at the now-defunct Institute of Production & Recording.
“We were like, ‘Okay, we’ve got this one day, we’re going to fit as much recording into it as possible,” says Annie. “So we got all the basic tracks for the rest of the songs done in that day, which was exciting. And since it was all students working on it, we were all like, ‘We’re all going to see if we can get as much done as we can. And then we got it all done, and we even got to do a few extra overdubs and stuff.”
Kitten Robot Records, a label and recording studio owned by ’80s new wave pop star Josie Cotton, sought the siblings out after seeing Annie in a local interview and signed them. Sisu was released February 2023, with Smith as a producer.
Now, Loki’s Folly returns with a new single, “King of All Alone,” which was released September 9. Written during the pandemic, it was inspired by an ABBA cover they were working on. But Annie, who really liked the chord progression of the song, kept experimenting with it in different keys. She fully intended it to be more of a songwriting exercise, she says. But the more they developed the song, the more confident they felt that it could be their next single.
“The lyrics are reminiscent of those pandemic feelings, and also feelings I think that I still feel now…” she says “…of waiting for that good thing to come and waiting for bad times to be over and hope to come through. With the political climate and the scariness of the world right now, it’s definitely a feeling that I feel even more now, with just wanting to kind of grasp onto whatever hope I can find in the world.’
Annie admits that a five-year age gap between them makes being in a band with her siblings easier.
“For me and my sister, music was definitely this shared bonding thing where we’d have sleepovers in my bedroom and she’d come over and we’d be on my laptop watching music videos or live videos until 3:00 or 4:00 a.m.” That was really a special thing for both of us. And then, I think, our brother, seeing us play shows and write music, he was like, ‘Wow, I want to do what my sisters are doing.’ So that inspired him to learn bass. He is definitely holding his own in keeping up with everything.”
Loki’s Folly continues to play shows with Soul Asylum, and the band is working on more singles, all while balancing work, school, and social lives. Annie says that they would love to eventually play music full-time. “That would be a dream come true,” she says. “But until then, I’m someone who’s willing to work hard both ways, keep it going. As long as I can keep doing it in any capacity, that feels fulfilling to me.”
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