Kiss the Tiger

At a time when the world seems intent on pushing us further inward and further apart,
Kiss the Tiger are here to rattle our bones and bust us out of our cocoons with some
good old fashioned rock and roll.
Fronted by the magnetic and disarming Meghan Kreidler, who draws on her background
in theater to break the fourth wall between audience and band with her righteous fist
pumps and high kicks, this is a band that doesn’t just play. They combust. And watching
them set the stage ablaze, it’s hard not to feel that tension that’s been built up in all of
us these past few years slowly release, too, like a collective exhale set to ratcheting

guitars, buoyant bass lines and Kreidler’s perfectly pitched screams. Theirs is a clean-
burning fire. Hell, you might even call it healing.

“We want to give the audience an experience that is visceral and jolts them awake—
creating community in that moment,” Kreidler notes. “I think that’s a really nice gift you
can give people: Just let go.”
Over the past few years Kiss the Tiger have set the Twin Cities ablaze, and there’s nary
a club, block party, park amphitheater or backyard that they haven’t transformed with
their commanding live shows. And their rigorous performance schedule has paid off:
The band has never sounded tighter or more certain of its mission. Kreidler is backed
on stage by her longtime partner and creative foil, Michael Anderson, on rhythm guitar,
plus lead guitarist Bridger Fruth, bassist Paul DeLong, and drummer Jay DeHut.
Their sets are often accompanied by sing-alongs to regional hits like the hard-knocking
“Motel Room,” their ode to pandemic loneliness, “I Miss You,” or their pleading anthem
“Hold On to Love,” all of which have become instantly recognizable to locals thanks to
regular airplay on the tastemaking public radio station 89.3 The Current. (“Hold On to
Love,” specifically, spent a whopping nine weeks at No. 1 on The Current’s Chart Show
and was inducted into the Chart Show Hall of Fame.)

Their latest album, Vicious Kid, is a tour de force through the band’s increasingly
sophisticated songwriting, which is handled jointly by Kreidler and Anderson. There are
plenty of moments where they embody the spirit of late ‘70s new wave punk, like in the
ridiculously fun “Who Does Her Hair?” But they have started weaving in softer textures,
too, like the crooning and feminist alt-country ballad “Grown Ass Woman” or the skeletal
and simmering “Out of My Mind.” Unsurprisingly, Vicious Kid was named one of the Best
Minnesota Albums of 2021 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune and highlighted as their
longtime critic Chris Riemenschneider’s personal favorite that year.
In addition to exploring a wider variety of sounds and genres, Vicious Kid also features
some of Kiss the Tiger’s most thought-provoking lyrics to date. In “Grown Ass Woman,”
Kreidler pleads, and then demands, that she be allowed to cut her own path in this
world—a message that dovetails seamlessly with Kiss the Tiger’s approach to making
music. “The angel of death wants me to draw another breath/But angel won’t you leave
me alone,” she sings and sighs. “Even near the end not a foe or a friend/Is gonna tell
me what to do.”
In addition to headlining their own barn-burning shows, Kiss the Tiger have also been
tapped to open for prominent acts like Lake Street Dive, The Suburbs, Ike Reilly, Jackie
Venson, Black Joe Lewis, and Daughtry. They have also brought their act on the road to
open for Philly’s Low Cut Connie, Austin’s Emily Wolfe, and fellow Minneapolis indie
favorites Bad Bad Hats. Given how quickly they’ve won over the Twin Cities, Kiss the
Tiger are poised to roar into more markets soon. Their transcendent, heart-forward rock
and roll is right on time.

Written by Andrea Swensson
Freelance music journalist, author, and host of the Official Prince Podcast