Los Angeles musician turns guitar duets with her horse into a new album

A Los Angeles singer-songwriter has found an unlikely musical partner — and it’s helping her rediscover why she fell in love with music.

Mikayla Khramov regularly posts videos on Instagram of herself playing guitar and singing Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5. Midway through the chorus, her 7-year-old horse, Yupia, wanders over and lightly chomps on the guitar strings, changing the chords. “This is what music should be about,” Mikayla told USA Today. “And I don’t want to do anything without my horse now. He makes it more fun.”Mikayla grew up around horses and returned to riding in 2023.

The singer-songwriter began volunteering with a horse rescue group in Moorpark, California, where she gets free riding lessons in exchange for her work. That’s where she met Yupia, a stubborn, Kentucky-bred horse who wasn’t properly trained and had a habit of biting people. He didn’t trust easily. But after months of building familiarity, Mikayla brought her instruments to the barn and started playing in the pasture.

Nine months into their relationship, Yupia moved closer and began nuzzling his mouth and snout onto the guitar strings. What started as a solo act became a duet.“Music was the tool to help build trust,” Mikayla told The Dodo in a YouTube video. “I didn’t give him treats or anything. It was kind of a miracle how it happened. He was almost like communicating or understanding me through the music.”She later brought her harp to the barn too. Yupia would sidle over and nudge the strings with his nose. The sound wasn’t always polished, but Mikayla said it felt like a conversation — and it rekindled her love of writing songs.

After years of gigs and bands that started to feel like a grind, the barn became a different kind of studio. “(Yupia) has inspired me to love music again and not treat it like a job or just a way to make money,” Mikayla said. “I go and I write music with him, and being at the barn — it’s a very inspiring place to write — and then he comes over and is participating with me, and it’s fun.”

That joy is now shaping her next project. Mikayla is working on her first album and plans to include some of Yupia’s sounds on the tracks. She describes it as a genre-bending mix of Portuguese musicians, folk, electronic sounds, songwriting, guitar — and of course, a horse.