Yukimi at Fine Line (25 Apr 2025)

It was an extremely busy Friday night in downtown Minneapolis with a regular season baseball game of the Twins hosting the Angels at Target Field and Game 3 of the opening round of the NBA playoffs with the Timberwolves hosting the Lakers at Target Center. Just a few blocks over, and with a lot fewer jerseys, Yukimi headlined a show at Fine Line.

AKKO opened the evening. AKKO (full name Andrew Koalska) is a DJ and multi-instrumentalist from Saint Paul. This is a DJ set up, and AKKO is playing a lot of original beats and music here. The starting point was a deeply funky electronic sound. Layering in the electronic keys and other sounds on top of the programmed percussion, he has a real sense of style. This is the kind of DJ electronica that gets people grooving. And with AKKO in a controlled dancing while manipulating all of his instrumentation, the crowd slowly warmed up to the beats.

By the time the first sampled lyrics hit and were part of a transition to the next section of the set, AKKO had picked up the rhythmic pace. A horns heavy section continued to pull people closer to the stage. This was a tough assignment, as the dance heavy set from AKKO probably wasn’t what the audience was expecting for an opener. But his upbeat stage presence may have helped him win the day. AKKO continued to work his way through a 40 minute set and left the stage, likely with a few new fans.

Yukimi (full name Yukimi Nagano) is a Swedish singer & songwriter. She’s best known as the lead vocalist for the electronic music group Little Dragon, a long-time band that formed in high school in the late 1990’s and has been together with the original line up ever since. They have released seven albums, including the Grammy nominated Nabuma Rubberband. Yukimi released her debut solo album, For You, in late March of 2025 and is in the middle of her North American tour in support of the album.

Yukimi was electric, in sunglasses and with an open Japanese fan on hand (also the backing motif of three large fans behind the band), she came out soulful on Make Me Whole. She got to the first of a set of percussion instruments she used throughout the evening. A quick hello to the audience and the band continued on. The band was a quintet, with guitar, bass, keyboards and drums backing Yukimi’s vocals. Break Me Down was described as a song written to “get back to a better space”, and Yukimi’s vocals once again had a blues style that the music is centered on. A cute note that the next song, Eli Nam, got the requisite “aww’s” from the audience.

Erik Bodin, from Little Dragon, was on drums and often back up vocals and clearly had some fans in the crowd. The rest of the band was great support, with four vocal parts in the song Sad Makeup. Yukimi noted that she was pleased to have finally gotten the album out, and it is clearly a labor of love for her. Thankfully, it’s also exceedingly listenable musically. Runaway highlighted Yukimi’s alto voice, and was the first to have some noticeable vocal reverb effects. This one also featured a funk keyboard and bass riff that was used to allow Yukimi to introduce the band.

Although this may be a debut album and tour, Yukimi and team (particularly Bodin) have the wealth of experience to lean on, so it should be no surprise that the pacing and ordering of the songs, and the latter between was fully professional. There didn’t seem to be any wasted moments and things ramped up and got more complex, particularly on the closing of No Prince. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we got a Little Dragon cover, with the band playing Pink Cloud. After a quick “band meeting” where Erik gave instructions to the band, we started Peace Reign with everyone but the keyboardist on various percussion. It was goofily fun and the audience ate it up.

Slowing it down a little in tempo didn’t keep things any less fun, with a Kate Bush cover of Army Dreamers. After completing the main set, the band returned for an encore. Bodin started things off on stage by himself with an extended drum solo, with the rest of the band following to play Rules of Schoolwith another long drum solo and flute in this total jam session. Finishing up with Feels Good to Cry, Yukimi and crew rode out of Minneapolis on a high note.