A debut album usually starts with a songwriter, a producer, and a backing band. But Los Angeles singer-songwriter Mikayla Khramov is taking a very different route — by featuring a rescue horse who, as USA Today reported, uses his nose to brush across guitar strings.
Her unlikely musical partnership with the rescue horse, Yupia, emerged from volunteer work at a horse rescue in Moorpark, California, where Khramov discovered that he was excited by music.
Here's what to know
Khramov first came across Yupia while helping at a Moorpark rescue that exchanged free riding lessons for barn work, USA Today reported. After returning to riding in 2023, she met the 7-year-old American Bashkir, a Kentucky-bred horse who was untrained and had never been ridden.
According to Khramov, Yupia was uneasy around people when they met and would sometimes bite out of frustration, USA Today noted. About nine months later, after slowly building trust, she started bringing instruments into the barn and allowing him to engage with them at his own pace — and he quickly showed off his musical talent.
"I didn't give him treats or anything. It was kind of a miracle how it happened. So when I discovered he was almost like communicating or understanding me—the music—I just started doing that regularly," Khramov recalled.
Those early sessions eventually evolved into the basis of Khramov's debut album. Yupia adds to the music by sliding his nose over guitar strings, pulling at strings with his teeth and engaging with other instruments she brings to him.
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More background
Khramov does not describe Yupia as a trained performer. She said the music-making developed naturally through patience, repetition, and trust.
She told USA Today that one of the first big moments came when she recorded him with a guitar and he continued playing for more than a minute.
"I think he started realizing like, 'Oh, this is like our little communication game.' Like, I can come in with a guitar and then we sit there together and we do it. So I started doing different instruments... I play the harp as well. So I'll bring the harp and he'll start playing it," she said.
The album has also tied Khramov back to her own family history in music. She said her father was a musician from Russia and told USA Today that after he died when she was 18, she kept playing in his honor.
She performs with multiple bands and, as USA Today noted, plays the harp in restaurants and hotels, but said Yupia changed the way music feels to her.
What's being done?
Khramov has begun turning Yupia's contributions into finished songs by sampling his guitar and harp playing. She has also incorporated the sounds of him running and whinnying into the album's sonic palette.
She then built around those recordings with Portuguese musicians, adding traditional folk instruments alongside more experimental elements. The result, she said, according to USA Today, mixes dark Americana folk with Portuguese influence, experimental electronic folk, Spanish guitar riffs, and American-style songwriting.
The album remains unfinished, and Khramov told USA Today she expects to return to Portugal in September for final mixing. She also said the project is self-funded, which has made it expensive to produce, especially with Los Angeles studio time costing about $600 a day before musician fees.
After the music is completed, she hopes to take it to record labels, USA Today reported.
She plans to release an EP before the full album and continues sharing videos of the recording process on Instagram.
Stories like this are a reminder of just how intelligent animals can be — and how their curiosity and interest in human activities may go unnoticed.
"It's not, 'Oh, I have a fancy instrument and I can't let anybody touch it.' Like, what's the point of music if you're not going to share it? You know, so I'm not mad about the damage on my instruments," she stated.
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