Americana for Justice Playlist: ICE out of Minnesota Edition
Local artists have stepped up to protest the brutal occupation of the Twin Cities and beyond with a host of powerful protest songs.
Carol Roth at a recent rally. Photo credit: Robert Voedisch.
Folkies in general, and Minnesotan artists in particular, have never been hesitant to use their voices to call out injustice and tell the stories of the oppressed and downtrodden. This is why many fans of the genre are drawn to it in the first place. As a matter of fact, we published an “Americana for Justice” playlist article back in 2021, and it remains one of our most popular pieces.
So it’s no surprise that in the face of the existential threat to our neighbors and our Constitution that is the occupation of Minnesota by ICE (and CBP/Border Patrol), local artists have responded with an outpouring of raw and passionate music decrying the human rights abuses and other atrocities inflicted on the Twin Cities and other areas of Minnesota.
As of this morning (2/12/26), an announcement (full of boastful untruths and obvious inaccuracies so taken with a grain of salt) was made that “Operation Metro Surge” is over in Minnesota. Even if that’s the case, the damage will linger for months or years. Immigrants will still need help to seek justice, to reunite with family, to make rent and put dinner on the table after being unable to work for months.
And even if/when this ends, we must never forget what happened here. Protest songs aren’t just important in the moment of resistance; Woody Guthrie’s music is still appreciated because it’s an enduring record of history, and because it becomes freshly relevant whenever injustice raises its ugly head, as it does time and time again.
We wanted to recognize and document the extraordinary body of work Minnesotans have created in these times: individual cries for justice that add up to a powerful testament to what’s happening. (We also included a few songs from the past few years—inspired by events such as the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the 2021 attack on Congress—that artists have been resharing and performing since this crisis began.)
This isn’t the only compilation of protest songs. We’d been contemplating our own roundup for a bit but it was this article from InsideHook that got us moving on it. MinnPost, The Current and MPR are all covering this phenomenon too.
There are at least two album compilations in the works as well. Duluth artist Grant Glad is offering presales for a vinyl compilation (due out in late 2026 or early 2027) featuring exclusive original protest songs written and performed by MN artists, with 100% of proceeds to go to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. The Mess Records and Drifter Music Group’s 30-song compilation album Thaw, featuring 25 local bands and musicians, releases everywhere on 2/15; 200 CDs will be sold at the ICE OUT show presented by TCUP (Twin Cities United Performers) at First Ave, and the digital album can be preordered on Bandcamp.
With this list of 35-plus acts lending their voice to the cause, I know we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s out there, so we’ll update it if we find out about more songs (regardless of genre). There are even a few we’ve heard at shows that we haven’t found recordings of but are trying to track down. Many of these are so new and quickly created that they only exist as performance videos on Instagram or Facebook, but if we know of a studio version we’ll link to it on YouTube. For the songs that have made it onto Bandcamp (several with proceeds going to various related organizations), we’ve created a wishlist so you can browse them.
Andrew Owen, “First Minnesota.” The Minneapolis artist’s debut single ties the historical story of the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment to our current civilian army of observers and helpers. Sample lyric: “fair’s still fair, and good still good / We learned the strongest bonds are bonds of neighborhood / A whistle shrill, signal to go / Shattered windows, and blood upon the snow / A line is crossed, our contract frays / And the first Minnesota’s standing guard again today.” Listen on Bandcamp.
bathtub cig, untitled. This indie-pop act’s response to our crisis is both world weary and defiant. Sample lyric: “They took the gardener from his bed / they shot the poet in the head … We are not afraid of you.” Watch/listen on Instagram.
The Cactus Blossoms, “On Our Own.” Technically they wrote this over the summer, before the ICE presence escalated here, but it’s even more relevant now—which is why they made the unusual choice to post a performance version on Instagram before it’s ready as a studio single. Sample lyric: “Smile for the camera / You don’t got a choice / But whatever happens to ya / Don’t let ‘em take away your voice.” Watch/listen on Instagram.
Eli Gardiner, “While The World Burns.” One of the most prolific protest song creators in Minneapolis, who never fails to chronicle injustices of our times, has crafted a letter to the hate mongers who created our most recent crisis. Sample lyric: “How do you sleep / when the vote is for hate? / How do you blind your eye and premeditate?” Watch/listen on YouTube.
Ellkaye, “Don't Make My City Shitty.” A brand new song from the Minneapolis artist also known as Lila Karash lays it out plainly for Trump, Noem and Miller. Sample lyric: “Don't ruin my fair city Kristi Noem / I know we had some problems we were / Handling on our own / We don't need your goon squad here / Leave us the fuck alone.” Watch/listen on YouTube.
emmy woods, untitled. Written in the aftermath of Renee Good’s murder, this song starts out addressing the killer, ICE agent Jonathan Ross, but expands to talk about the community’s response to her death. Sample lyric: “They’re filling up these city streets with calls for justice, prayers for peace.” Watch/listen on Instagram.
emmy woods (ft. Jake Johnson), “Fly like a Dove.” Weeks after penning her ode to Good, the Minnesota folk singer had reason to write yet another elegy, this time for the VA nurse Alex Pretti murdered by Border Patrol agents. Sample lyric: “You with your bleeding heart / you with your love / your body a barrier / protecting someone / and you don't even know them / but you know they're human / and for that you love them / you die showing it to them.” Watch/listen on YouTube.
Dan Rodriguez, “Pretti/Good.” This heartbreaking and heartfelt song mourns the loss of Good and Pretti while contemplating their legacy, and the way our collective grieving for them has added fuel to the fire of righteous resistance. Sample lyric: “And with the last words of a poet / That we all heard so clear / And the last actions of a helper / Standing in the face of fear / History will tell our story / And you’ll know right where we stood / with Pretti/Good.” Watch/listen on Instagram.
Durry, “Told You So.” Aimed at a relative who claimed an immigration crackdown wouldn’t be as bad as the artist thought, this angrily mocking song takes little pleasure in his being right. Sample lyric: “You can’t trust your eyes, your ears or your memory / you can’t trust your neighbors, your friends or your family / the only truth teller that’s left on the globe is a washed-up reality host.” Watch/listen on Instagram.
Erik Koskinen, “45th Parallel” (2024). At a recent show in Saint Paul, days after the second killing of an observer by federal agents, the singer-songwriter pulled out a recently released song written about the events surrounding George Floyd’s murder nearly five years ago. Its bleakly atmospheric vibe and words feel once again relevant. Sample lyric: “Now the city’s on fire, calling out the liars / And the Liberty Bell / Yeah you thought nothing bad happened / On the 45th parallel.” Listen on YouTube.
FINICK, “Earworm.” This single—written last fall but even more relevant now—will be available on the Thaw album Feb. 15, but a raw performance version is out on socials now. The angry refrain echoes the hope that all the whistling, shouting and chanting we do in the streets are adding to a tidal wave of resistance that will someday wash ICE out of our state. Sample lyric: “Do you hear my voice / Am I loud enough for you now? / Can we make some noise til they’re drowning in the sound?” Watch/listen on Instagram.
The Foxgloves, “Across the Rio Grande” (2023). While it’s easy to focus on the many documented residents and citizens targeted by this regime, the undocumented deserve our sympathy and even admiration, as this song points out. Says bandmember Maura Dunst, “I wrote it after I saw a photo of a man and his toddler tucked into his shirt who drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande. I was blown away by comments about how he should’ve tried to come into the country legally. I thought his actions were braver than anything those lame keyboard warriors have ever done in their lives.” Sample lyric: “Better than a shallow grave; up there my baby can be saved / I know the law says this is wrong, but for my child I must be strong.” Listen on Bandcamp.
The Gated Community, “Hope to Hell.” Frontman Sumanth Gopinath says, "I am so moved and inspired by the bravery, intelligence, and steadfastness of my fellow Minnesotans in the Twin Cities who, against the odds, are acting tirelessly on behalf of our most vulnerable community members. This song is for them." All proceeds will be donated to local aid organizations including Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC). Sample lyric: “Are we gonna stop this war today? / Goodbye, occupiers today? / So damn tired of being nice today / Come out and march with me today.” Listen on Bandcamp.
Jack Klatt, “Blue Lights and Yellow Flames.” Another song written in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder (and containing eerily prescient imagery), this one was also revisited in a recent live show. Sample lyric: “If you listen to the ice / You can hear it crack at night / This town’s gonna blow / Blue lights and yellow flames / You can’t comprehend the pain.” Listen on Bandcamp.
jeremy messersmith, “Fuck This.” Available in four versions—original, community choir, censored and karaoke instrumental—this song succinctly sums up the artist’s (and many others’) feelings following Good’s murder. All proceeds from bandcamp will go to support mutual aid organizations. Sample lyric: “Fuck this / Fuck every single part of it / Fuck those Iceholes / Go fuck yourselves and then eat shit / Fuck them and fuck that / Fuck all of you fuckers, goddamn! / Fuck all you do / Fuck you.” Listen on Bandcamp.
Jillian Rae, “Fuck ICE.” The F-bomb is in the spotlight in this roundup (with good reason). We’re mad, and we’re sick of this shit, especially if (like Rae), you’re from South Minneapolis, where both recent murders took place. Sample lyric: “Fuck the unmarked car you rode in on / Fuck your self-inflated notion that you’re some kind of god … you fucking hypocritical cucks.” Like messersmith’s song, all proceeds from bandcamp will go to support mutual aid organizations. Listen on Bandcamp.
John Louis, “Unmarked Vans.” This singer-songwriter of heartfelt personal songs is the first to admit that writing something political is unusual for him. Its sound may be as gentle as the rest of Louis’s catalog, but he doesn’t hold back in this song written during the early days of the ICE surge, before it escalated to the point of making national headlines. Sample lyric: “Genocide, slavery, internment camps / Thought we’d learned better from that / Soldiers in our cities and secret police / We took the wrong lessons from history.” Listen on Bandcamp.
John Swardson, “The Storm ’26.” The original version was written in 2020, following the killing of George Floyd and the unrest that followed. This quiet, brooding update is half lament, half defiant call to action. Sample lyric: “Alex and Renee walked out to live but they died / Storm raging we won’t stay inside / Mama’s facing ICE in the street / lightning jumps from house to house as children try to sleep.” Watch/listen on Instagram.
Kashimana and Thomasina Petrus, “Don't Buy The Lie.” The duo call out one of the biggest threats at the core of the current invasion: the rampant spread of lies and distortions attempting to demonize the victims of ICE and misrepresent what’s happening before our very eyes—all with the goal of weakening the people’s power to resist. Sample lyric: “Don’t buy the lie / It’s gonna cost you, too / When they hurt me, they hurt you / We’re all connected, can’t you see / None of us are free, till all of us are free.” Watch/listen on YouTube.
Katy Tessman, untitled. This tune tackles the feelings of dissonance of living under occupation and likens waiting for the spring thaw to wanting to breathe easy knowing the state is free again. Sample lyric: “I try not to think about what’s been done / I lock the door and throw the bolts.” Watch/listen on Instagram.
Laamar, “Who Is She to You?” A meditation on trying to be braver and show up for one another—while questioning what’s in the minds of the ICE agents causing all the destruction and fear in our community—ends on a haunting, looping refrain about a moment caught in the artist’s mind: the image of Renee Good’s car speeding away as her dying body caused it to accelerate. Sample lyric: “So drive it like you mean it / Pedal to the floor / Drive it like you mean it / We ain’t scared no more.” Watch/listen on Instagram.
Leslie Rich, “REVOLT” (2023). Written by a newly minted citizen witnessing the year of unrest that started with the George Floyd uprising and culminated in the insurrection on Capitol Hill in 2021, this song uses the dual meaning of “revolt” to express disgust over “the cyclical nature of promises made and promises broken, while retaining the hope that new ideas and fresh direction is hot on the heels of the failings of the recent past.” Sample lyric: “Does the fading sunset mean anything to you / I wonder when do you realize that you’re through.” Watch/listen on YouTube.
Leslie Rich, “Not Getting Out” (2021). Despite the pessimistic title and verses full of worry and fear, the song ends on a hopeful note about the value of protest. Sample lyric: “Hey, we’re righting wrongs / And we’re singing songs / And so we fight, so we don’t have to fight / For things deserved / In this troubled world / And so together we are stronger than we were.” Listen on YouTube.
Maria Isa, “Que Se Vaya El Hielo (ICE Leave MN!).” The Minnesota House rep and hip hop artist’s song, fueled by traditional Afro-Boricua Bomba drumming, recounts the horrors ICE is inflicting punctuated with the title refrain. Sample lyric: “This is Project 25 / killing with their crimes / Kidnapping hear the cries / Got the mamas and the babies hiding up inside.” Watch/listen on YouTube.
Michael Gay, “All You Fascists Bound to Lose (2026 edition).” This artist covers the classic Woody Guthrie protest song, adding a verse to address our current struggle. Sample lyric: “There’s people of every color marchin’ side by side / Taking to the winter streets like salt we’ll melt the ICE / They’re bound to lose.” Watch/listen on Instagram.
Molly Brandt, “Do You Possess An Iron Will?” Proceeds for this simmering single, available exclusively on Bandcamp, will go towards The Immigrant Rapid Response Fund (IRRF). In it, the artist asks a question many Minnesotans probably ask of themselves: whether we’ve got what it takes to keep resisting a force backed by the federal government that seemingly can’t be reined in. Sample lyric: “When the chaos is raging, did you head for the hills? / Or stand before a tank perfectly still? / Do you possess an iron will?” Listen on Bandcamp.
Natalie Lovejoy, “This Ground is Home.” Written in a matter of minutes upon learning of Good’s death, this song reverberates with the raw shock of that news but also with courage and belief in our community. All net proceeds will be donated to Minnesota's Immigrant Defense Network. Sample lyric: “Rise up, scream it out loud / Take heed, but don’t back down / From frozen streets, to broken homes / We stand together, never alone.” Listen on Bandcamp.
Nicky Nieling, “Tell Us More Lies.” This tune highlights the intentional disorientation caused by Trump’s “flood the zone” tactics, such as telling too many lies for the media or public to focus on any one of them for too long and committing so many violent and unconstitutional acts that the judicial system is overwhelmed and ineffective. Sample lyric: “Constant distractions and military in our town / Hypocrisy is constant and smiles turned upside down / I don’t know which way’s up now and everything’s going down.” Watch/listen on Bandcamp.
Paul Metsa & Alan Sparhawk: "No Kings (No Crown)" (2025). Recorded last October, the song has been put to a music video featuring recent images from the ICE occupation. Metsa says on his website, “It is an historic moment in time and we hope to warn other cities of the damage that ICE did here in Minneapolis. The artists involved in this project stand in solidarity and resistance to the madness.” I consider some of my songs to be "bullets in the machine gun of peace and social justice.” Sample lyric: “It’s good to remember … There’s way more of us than there are of them.” Listen/watch on YouTube.
Rebecca Aadland, “The Emperor.” It’s hard to see in the midst of the ongoing terror and destruction here, but polls do show Trump is taking a significant hit in support by waging this political retaliation on Minnesota. This protest song is reassuring in its confidence that the regime is collapsing while we try to hold the line. Sample lyric: “Foundations are crumbling, there’s chaos on the floor / King baby’s taken power, and he’s busy keeping score, he’s keeping score / But the truth will come, that’s how the story goes / The truth will come, and there’s a child who knows / The Emperor has no clothes.” Listen/watch on Facebook.
Robin Jamner, “Heart Break.” This song takes a step back from eulogizing the people who have become emblems of our struggle—people whose names have become famous, like Renee Good, as well as people who have become statistics, like the many people racially profiled and abducted without due process by ICE—and brings them back to a human level, insisting on the importance of empathy in creating a better world. Sample lyric: “I refuse to reduce her to a symbol / She had a life before we had this vigil … I refuse to reduce him to a number / Each person taken is another neighbor.” Watch/listen on YouTube.
Sarah Streitz, “Get Out of Minnesota Kristi Noem.” This song rattles off atrocities committed by ICE with building disgust, each verse culminating with a chorus directed at the puppet master (or at least one of the head puppets). Sample lyric: “Your ignorance is your bliss / But in Minnesota people are pissed / So get out of Minnesota Kristi Noem.” Watch/listen on Instagram.
Shruthi Rajasekar, “Feeling slightly better singing with you...” In this song, the Indian-American composer shares the trauma of living in Minnesota right now, especially as a person of color, but also the healing to be found in music and community. She explains, “What's unique about this moment is that most of us are now at our breaking points. Driving home, I hyperventilated when I was followed for a short while by a high-speed law enforcement vehicle. I wrote this song to calm my frazzled nerves. I wrote this song to pierce through my numb fog. And I wrote this song to feel less isolated. Sample lyric: “Feeling kind of numb as / Fire burns the world but a / Step towards rebuilding is / Singing with you.” Listen on YouTube.
Steve Goertz, “Good Trouble.” Written for the prompt “good” in a songwriting challenge, this song ties the last name that will long be synonymous with social justice here in Minnesota with the legendary John Lewis call to action, giving a litany of ways people can take action, from simple deeds of mutual aid to running for office. Sample lyric: “Brother you want justice / it’s time to get out and vote.” Watch/listen on Facebook.
Swallows, “Insurrection Song.” Fiery and dark, enraging and energizing, the song relates some of the more horrifying things that have happened in Minneapolis lately (including Good’s and Pretti’s deaths) with the refrain “That’s what’s going down here.” Despite the darkness, there’s hope and defiance as well. Sample lyric: “They're watching us / We're watching, too / They have the guns / We have the truth / Yeah, that's what's going down here.” Listen on Bandcamp.
Tim Goodwin, We Rise. Protest songs are one thing; this artist put out an entire protest album. “Some songs were in the works,” he told us in late January; “others were written and recorded just this last weekend. All were recorded in the last two weeks.” One of the obviously more recent songs, “What’s Good?” starkly recounts the circumstances around Good’s and Pretti’s murders, then addresses their killers. Sample lyric: “Would you take that bullet back or do it all just the same? / What if they were your loved ones / Or if you just knew their names?” Listen on YouTube.
Wren + Wilde, untitled. With all the atmospheric darkness of a murder ballad, this folk song nevertheless carries a healthy dose of hope along with the desolation over the harm brought by ICE and CBP. Sample lyric: “Hear them spin their stories and slander victims’ names / Cover up the truth and let no one take the blame / Candles on the corner, bear witness to the promise / Love, holds strong and light shines on / in our beloved Minneapolis.” Watch/listen on Instagram.
Got additions to this list? Please email us: info@adventuresinamericana.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Adventures in Americana co-founder Carol Roth is a novelist who publishes both under her name and the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley in a range of genres, from horror to thriller to YA. She loves to play guitar, sing and occasionally write songs. Her wide-ranging passions also include vegan cooking, personal finance, watching queer romance TV/movies and learning to speak Thai. By day she’s a marketing writer/brand strategist.
