Minneapolis rockers Heart to Gold are on track to have one of their biggest years yet. A decade ago, they began as a DIY rock band inspired by skateboarding culture and the Midwest punk and emo scenes. Their ethos hasn’t changed, and neither has their high-energy spirit.

The Local Show’s February Artist of the Month, Heart to Gold now have a global, cult-like fan base and a catalog of three full-length studio records, one EP, and two live albums — including a coveted Audiotree Session. 

The band has a big headlining show at First Avenue on Friday, Feb. 27 with the support of three beloved Minnesota bands: Remo Drive, she’s green, and WHY NOT.

Prior to that, the trio hosts a free event at Familia Skateboard Shop in northeast Minneapolis on Saturday, Feb. 7, to raise donations ($20 suggested) for the Immigrant Defense Network MN in response to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s polarizing surge in the Twin Cities. The lineup includes local underground hardcore punk bands Linus, Peeler, American Muscle, and Tammy.

Then on July 19, Heart to Gold will perform on day three of the Minnesota Yacht Club Festival at Harriet Island in St. Paul, the same day as The Strokes, Cage The Elephant, Passion Pit and more. 

Heart to Gold spoke with Diane about their upcoming year, live music culture, relationships they’ve built along the way, and what is to come.

Transcript edited for clarity and length

Diane Miller: Tell us about your big show at First Avenue?

Grant Whiteoak: We always try to play with friends, and we have a lot of friends in those bands. Spent a lot of time with those bands. And they're each amazing in their own way. It's a somewhat diverse bill, and those are some of the best bills. So it worked out. I'm very hyped that all those bands get to play that show.

DM: And then you're going to be going on tour with Sweet Pill and heading to Japan this coming year. And then coming back with another big show in St. Paul at the Minnesota Yacht Club Festival.

GW: Oh, that's right. 

DM: Yeah, holy smokes. What are you most excited for?

Jim Kiser: Japan is just going to be an experience, whether the shows flop or not. I don't think we're even really expecting the shows to be insane, but going to Japan and experiencing that culture and stuff. That's what we're most excited to do. And meet some new people and make new friends out there — and play music.

GW: We've never really done an international thing, and we're going to Japan. Our record sells over there. And we've had certain people reach out from the country … I know Blake is going to stay there an extra three or four weeks after.

Blake Kuethe: Yeah, that's my excuse to take a vacation. I'm already going to be there.

One of the most immediate things you see when you follow y'all via social media, you have this incredible die-hard fan base. The audience is just raucous — uncontrollable, jumping, thrashing, singing, crowd surfing and screaming. Tell me about your experience of developing into a band that has commanded the audience in this way.

GW: That is very kind of you to say. I want to remind people that we don't project our failures. And sometimes we play shows where that certainly isn't the case. And we are definitely, maybe, a palette cleanser — is a nice way to put it. Or we just don't connect the way that it seems. But the shows that that does happen, it energizes us, and then we energize them, and then there's this —

JK: Symbiotic relationship.

GW: Yeah, it's really, really cool. From the beginning of this band, we were all going to shows. And we were those kids or fans or people just going crazy. Maybe there's something that we don't directly communicate, but we communicate with people like, "Come on. Let's do this together. Let's make it a thing. Let's share the energy and make it something to remember." And maybe that's why we have that die-hard fan base. Very fortunate for that.

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Y'all are obviously very talented musicians. The way that you sing — there's a certain way that you just let go and release. And you put everything into the way you play instruments and the way that you release on stage. Tell me about developing this musicianship over time in this very high energy form of music.

BK: I used to play in a metal band, and I was doing a lot. I needed to do less and make sure the song was being serviced. Then I wanted to be very emotionally and physically involved with the music in a different way. So early on, when I joined the band, I was just moving my body in all sorts of ways and just having a good time. From my standpoint, I just try to have the most fun and bring the most energy. I don't want to leave the stage dry. I want to be sweaty and feel like I got a workout in.

JK: I second that. I like to try and surprise myself, like, tap into a different part of my brain when performing sometimes. And that can happen at the deadest of shows. Something that popped into my head was that Chapel Hill show.

GW: It rocked, but it didn't rock. 

JK: For no reason. I had said before, "I'm gonna take it easy tonight, guys." And I wake up the next morning with the sorest neck. I was so happy. It's cool when the crowd is kind of dead, and then you play and you just are getting more wild. And you can see that coming from the crowd too.

GW: Yeah, sometimes we blow people's minds. They're a little bit like, "What just happened?"

BK: Yeah, music is the most fun when you just let yourself go and let your body do what it wants to do. And I don't know, people latch onto that, and they're like, "Well, I want to go crazy."

DM: It feels cathartic. 

GW: That's the right word.

DM: Yeah, and it feels youthful. My introduction to music scenes was punk and emo. And I feel like it's such a great gateway into a broader culture and scene. But there is definitely something about punk and emo scenes that feel so special and community-based. Also, skateboarding culture is big for y'all as well. Tell me about that connection.

GW: Just as a songwriter and someone who loves to skateboard, the worlds seem to intertwine together without being super intentional about it. The skateboard community aspect has been like, we're a band. I meet people skating. They find out we're in a band. They do their research, or they come to an event or a show. They see what's going on, and now they're into it. And it just spreads that way. It's the nature of the beast being into punk rock and skateboarding. They're very, very similar.

DM: Tell me about working with Will Yip. He's a legend, and he discovered y'all via live video footage. And he's highly respected amongst the scene of artists that y'all are associated with — Title Fight, Tiger's Jaw, and most notably right now is Turnstile. He produced your most recent record, Free Help. Curious to know your working symbiotic relationship with him.

JK: Yeah, it was crazy getting to Studio 4 [Yip’s studio in Pennsylvania], and immediately it was like his energy and our energy just meshed really well. And it was like we had known each other for years. But he was just such a great dude, very genuine. Thanks for the shoes, Will.

DM: What shoes? 

JK: He gave me these Jordan Ones that are near and dear to my heart. 

GW: They're fly.

BK: Yeah, he's an intense guy in the best way. My hands were bleeding [playing drums].

DM: Was he just like, "Again! Again!" 

GW: Yeah, it was kind of like [the movie] Whiplash, but in a cool way. 

BK: Each note has to be the perfect sound, or else, run it back, but in the best way. He wants the best out of whatever piece of music he's working with. He makes you feel like that song or that record is the most important thing to him in that moment and to you. He likes to work with passionate people who really care about the music.

GW: He's very devoted to his craft. And I am very, very thankful to call that person my friend. I was actually talking to him yesterday. He's a genius. He's a genius in a department that I have no idea about. I don't know what it takes to engineer or produce at the scale that he does. And from the people that he's worked with and the experiences that he has. Will's awesome.

DM: And you're part of his label, which is this very small indie label.

GW: Yeah. I don't think this is what it is on paper, but it's kind of like a subsidiary of Run For Cover. I know that they reap the same operations in the distribution aspect. But yeah, Memory Music is great too. 

DM: Speaking of Midwest emo scenes and community, in particular, Minnesota — Remo Drive. Y'all have a synergistic relationship with them. Erik Paulson produced your first full-length record, Comp, which is the record that really put y'all on the map. Tell me about your kinship with Remo Drive.

GW: Remo was already a band, and I had started getting into going to local shows. And from what I had thought was what I liked about live music was just these energetic punk shows. And Remo Drive was one of those bands within this scene that had their own little local version of what I had seen on the internet. And a couple other bands like Pierre and Molly's Worst Enemy. 

I started going to shows, and then Facebook was the means of operation at that time. Or you sign on to go to events or shows that were promoted there. And then you would become friends with those people. And I cold-called Erik once, "Hey, I'm in this band. We have five songs. I know you record music. Would you want to do it?" Then he said yes. 

And we didn't really know each other that well. And then we were recording. And he and his brother Stephen were doing their little communication back and forth via their eyes. And I guess to them, they were like, "Oh, this is dope. This is really cool." And so then they asked us to play a show. And I believe we played in a middle school or a community center.

I really looked up to Erik at that moment in time, because he was such a good guitar player. And I love playing guitar. At that time, I was really eager and open to just being like, "You and I are friends now." And then it snowballed from there. And they deserve all the flowers that they've ever gotten and will get.

BK: Yeah, we've been linked with them from the get go. Erik did Still Stuck. Erik also recorded and produced Tom too. And so Free Help was really the first record we did that Erik didn't have any involvement in.

DM: Having been a band for 10 years, what’s changed? What has remained the same? Can you reflect a little bit on your lifespan?

BK: Maybe this is not what other people think, but I still feel young and I still feel new. Going to Japan, we're a new band. When we're doing some of the support tours we're doing, we're the young, new band. And so when it's like, yeah, we've been around for 10 years. It's like, wait, what? I still feel like we're just finally getting a foot in the door. 

GW: Whether we wanted to or not, that was the blueprint to follow. It was like a DIY aspect to it throughout everything, from your releases, your merchandise that you're making, the tours that you're doing. Up until when we started working towards Free Help and started working with Memory, that was when things kind of shifted. Now we have a team with people. So, the way that we're doing it does feel a lot more recent and new, because we don't go about doing the thing the way that we used to do it. Which is not to say that we don't play DIY one offs, we don't do any of that stuff. We do. We love doing that. 

But I guess time flies when you're having fun, right? One of the things that we all always try to prioritize is, like, “Is this cool? Is this fun? Are we enjoying ourselves?” And sometimes we're not. Sometimes touring and doing the music thing is really, really hard. But for us, thankfully, we have been like a tumbleweed snowball effect, where we've never had a whole lot that pushed us back enough to be mortified in ways where we cannot do this or we don't want to do this. We still enjoy doing music after the 10-year mark. It feels weird to say, I have to be honest. But we're enjoying it. We have a lot more to give. And, yeah, it's great.

DM: It's beautiful to see the excitement coming for y'all because, when I hear and listen to your music, I'm like, damn, this is [expletive] good. And that was my first response, the first time I heard Heart to Gold. I was like, this hits.

The Minneapolis scene is quite heavy right now. And it would be a shame to not bring up the present time with ICE in our city. How are you all experiencing that right now?

GW: It's gnarly. In a totally bad way.

JK: It's good to see how the community is coming together at the same time, though. In the face of this adversity and this horrible regime that we're up against. Seeing the communication happen in real time has been really cool. That's the silver lining, I guess. I feel like the community is tighter than ever with the polarization that's happening. 

BK: When stuff like this happens, it seems like the Minneapolis community has a way to pick each other up. And right now, it's hard to know what's going to be enough. Everyone has their own hand to play in the situation, their own unique ways they can help and make a difference. And we all got to keep thinking about it and keep talking about it and not ignoring it because nothing's going away. 

GW: It feels like it may just be getting started. And there's a long road ahead.

DM: Makes community all the more important. So, you've released Free Help in 2024. You just released this awesome single "Double Vision," which was kind of a B-side. What do you have coming up? 

JK: We've been writing a lot. I feel like that's what a lot of our time has gone to since we got back from this last tour. And even before. Obviously, there's a lot of preparation for shows happening, and we're also trying to write.  But yeah, we got a bunch of stuff ready to go.

GW: We have a lot of dope new music. It's tough. For sure tough.

DM: And will you be working with Will on this?

JK: We'll see. I guess our contract is up with Memory. It was just two albums.

GW: A lot of people thought that we signed to a label, which we signed to put out releases with. So we did a two-album deal, like Jim said. And now we're technically free agents, and we can put music out with whoever we want. But that's not to say that we don't have a great relationship with Will, and it would be great to work with him again. When the time comes, we'll cross that bridge and see what our options are, where his head's at. He's a busy guy.

DM: Heart to Gold, so honored and excited to have you all as our Artist of the Month. I love the work that y'all are doing here in the Twin Cities music scene. Anything else you'd like to add? Anything that would be good to share with The Current listeners or fans?

GW: Please take care of yourselves out there. I hope to see you all at our show on the 27th. It would be great to share the evening with anybody who's listening. I love you guys. And thank you so much Diane for taking the time. And thank you to anybody else out there who's giving us their time.

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