Mato Wayuhi

Belonging to the Oglala Lakota Nation, Mato Wayuhi combines deep regard for musical heritage with a drive toward sonic experimentation, fueling his accomplishments as a rapper, producer, and composer. His profile rose sharply when he supplied the music for Reservation Dogs, the widely praised dramedy featuring a largely Indigenous ensemble both behind and in front of the camera.

His childhood unfolded in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, amid the Pine Ridge Reservation, where his Lakota roots remained closely bound to music from the start. Early exposure to a wide range of styles, including hard rock acts such as Black Sabbath, steered him toward a professional path in the arts. During his time at the University of Southern California, he issued self-produced albums that blended alt-pop and hip-hop with vivid palettes, among them 2018’s Part-Time Indian, which included the well-liked track “Stone Cold Lover,” and 2019’s Scatterbrain.

The 2021 release Pleasure offered an introspective collection shaped in part by his experiences as a queer individual. Later that year he reached larger audiences through his compositional work on Reservation Dogs, the Emmy-nominated series centered on Indigenous petty criminals in rural Oklahoma. Seminole filmmaker Sterlin Harjo and Maori director Taika Waititi created the project, which spanned three seasons from 2021 to 2023. Wayuhi also contributed to the score of War Pony, a coming-of-age story set on the Pine Ridge Reservation that served as the feature directorial debut of Riley Keough, granddaughter of Elvis Presley; the film received the Camera d’Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. In 2024 he followed with another expansive studio effort, Stankface Standing Soldier.