Native Cat Recordings Amplifying Indigenous Voices, One Song at a Time

Native Cat Recordings

Amplifying Indigenous Voices, One Song at a Time

Latest Articles

Chopping the Sacred: How Reservation Beatmakers Are Turning Tradition Into the Future of Hip-Hop
Artist Spotlight

Chopping the Sacred: How Reservation Beatmakers Are Turning Tradition Into the Future of Hip-Hop

A quiet revolution is happening in bedroom studios across Indian Country, where a new generation of Indigenous producers is flipping field recordings, tribal drum patterns, and ancestral song fragments into instrumentals that hit just as hard as anything coming out of Atlanta or LA. These beatmakers aren't waiting for a label to greenlight their vision — and they're asking questions about cultural ownership that the music industry isn't even close to being ready for.
Scoring While Native: The Indigenous Composers Forcing Hollywood to Actually Listen
Artist Spotlight

Scoring While Native: The Indigenous Composers Forcing Hollywood to Actually Listen

For decades, Hollywood scored Native stories with outsiders who'd never set foot on a reservation. A new generation of Indigenous composers is changing that — and the fight to get in the room is only the beginning. Here's what happens when the people whose lives are being depicted finally get to write the music behind them.
Borrowed Sounds, Stolen Credit: The Native Musicians America's Music Industry Erased
Listening Guides

Borrowed Sounds, Stolen Credit: The Native Musicians America's Music Industry Erased

Long before Nashville had a sound, Indigenous musicians were shaping the melodies, rhythms, and storytelling traditions that would eventually become country, folk, and rock. Their contributions were absorbed, repackaged, and sold back to America — without their names on a single liner note. Here's the history they never taught you, and the artists today who are finally setting the record straight.
From the Arena to the Algorithm: How Powwow Culture Found Its Footing on TikTok
Artist Spotlight

From the Arena to the Algorithm: How Powwow Culture Found Its Footing on TikTok

Young Indigenous dancers and singers are racking up millions of views by bringing powwow traditions to short-form video — and the conversation about what gets shared, what stays sacred, and who gets to decide is just getting started. This is a generational negotiation playing out in real time, one duet and one drum beat at a time.
Stop Putting Native Artists in a Box — They're Already Miles Past It
Artist Spotlight

Stop Putting Native Artists in a Box — They're Already Miles Past It

Mainstream music media has spent decades shrinking Indigenous sound down to two instruments and a vibe. A new generation of Native artists working across hip-hop, indie rock, electronic, and country are done waiting for the industry to catch up — and the toll of being perpetually exoticized is real, documented, and frankly exhausting to witness.
Dead Strings, Living Songs: The Indigenous Musicians Bringing Forgotten Instruments Back From the Edge
Artist Spotlight

Dead Strings, Living Songs: The Indigenous Musicians Bringing Forgotten Instruments Back From the Edge

A growing wave of Native artists is pulling traditional instruments out of the shadows — not to preserve them behind glass, but to run them through pedalboards, sample packs, and 808s. These aren't museum restoration projects. This is resurrection with an attitude.
No Label, No Problem: How Native Artists Are Building Real Music Economies on Their Own Terms
Artist Spotlight

No Label, No Problem: How Native Artists Are Building Real Music Economies on Their Own Terms

Indigenous musicians across the country are skipping the major label handshake entirely and building something more powerful — direct relationships with fans and full ownership of their art. From Bandcamp pages run out of reservation homes to DIY merch operations shipped from kitchen tables, Native artists are proving that economic sovereignty and cultural sovereignty are the same fight. This is what self-determination sounds like in 2024.
Signal From the Rez: How Tribal Radio Stations Became the Unlikely Breeding Ground for Native Music's Next Wave
Listening Guides

Signal From the Rez: How Tribal Radio Stations Became the Unlikely Breeding Ground for Native Music's Next Wave

Long before Spotify playlists and TikTok algorithms, reservation radio stations were doing the hard work of keeping Indigenous music alive and putting it in front of young ears who needed to hear it. For a generation of Native artists now making noise on a national stage, those crackly FM signals were the beginning of everything.
Their Music, Their Rules: Indigenous Artists Are Rewriting the Playbook on Cultural Sound Ownership
Artist Spotlight

Their Music, Their Rules: Indigenous Artists Are Rewriting the Playbook on Cultural Sound Ownership

For decades, Native sounds have shown up in blockbuster films, chart-topping pop records, and Super Bowl ads — usually without a single phone call to the communities those sounds came from. Now, Indigenous musicians and legal advocates are building something new: a framework where they set the terms, full stop.
From the Drum Circle to the DAW: Native Artists Are Rewiring the Sound of the Powwow
Artist Spotlight

From the Drum Circle to the DAW: Native Artists Are Rewiring the Sound of the Powwow

A new wave of Indigenous musicians is doing something bold — feeding centuries-old powwow drum traditions through synthesizers, samplers, and 808s without asking permission from anyone outside their communities. The result is a genre-defying sound that's turning heads from reservation radio stations to international festival stages. It's not a compromise. It's an evolution.
Singing the Language Back to Life: The Indigenous Artists Turning Every Verse Into an Act of Resistance
Listening Guides

Singing the Language Back to Life: The Indigenous Artists Turning Every Verse Into an Act of Resistance

Across the United States, a growing number of Native musicians are releasing music entirely in their ancestral languages — not as a niche experiment, but as a deliberate act of cultural survival. From Navajo-language rap to Ojibwe lullabies finding audiences on Spotify, these artists are proving that a song can be a lifeline. This is your guide to listening in.
Streaming in Ceremony: How Indigenous Artists Are Claiming Space on Spotify Without Selling Their Soul
Artist Spotlight

Streaming in Ceremony: How Indigenous Artists Are Claiming Space on Spotify Without Selling Their Soul

Native musicians are logging onto Spotify and Apple Music in record numbers — and they're doing it on their own terms. From carefully curated playlists to deliberate sonic boundaries around sacred sounds, Indigenous artists are rewriting the rules of what digital success actually looks like. This is what the powwow trail looks like when it runs through an algorithm.
Meet the Architects: 7 Indigenous Composers and Producers Quietly Remaking American Music
Listening Guides

Meet the Architects: 7 Indigenous Composers and Producers Quietly Remaking American Music

From Lakota hip-hop to Diné electronic soundscapes, these seven Native composers and producers aren't waiting for a seat at the table — they're building their own. Here's your essential introduction to the Indigenous artists reshaping American sound from the ground up, with exactly where to start listening.