The captivating electronic artist from Fort Worth, known as Squanto, Rickey Kinney, has gone missing in Los Angeles.
Rickey Kinney, an unconventional artist and electronic musician, made Fort Worth his home from the late 2000s to the late 2010s. During that time, he created, performed, and released music under the alias Squanto, while also producing music videos for local bands such as Oil Boom and Son of Stan. In 2019, Kinney relocated to Los Angeles to explore new opportunities. However, by 2022, he returned to Oklahoma to reunite with family. He continued to alternate between Oklahoma and California until October 1, 2024, when he ventured back to Los Angeles. According to a post shared on the Missing in America Network’s Facebook group, that was the last time his family heard from him, although they maintained contact until July 24, 2025, when he ceased responding to their messages.
My heart sank upon seeing the post about Rickey’s disappearance. The last communication I received from him was a text sent at 1:58 AM on November 14, 2023, in which he asked if he could crash at my place. Unfortunately, I read it hours later and did not respond. I was aware that he had been grappling with challenges and that the pressures of life in Los Angeles had taken a toll on him. This was not unfamiliar territory for him. Rickey often seemed burdened by the weight of existence—not through substance abuse, but rather through the strain of navigating the complexities of life. The challenges of paying bills and dealing with the relentless trivialities of modern existence seemed to both inspire his work and weigh heavily on his mind. His artistic expression sought to make sense of the contradictions and chaos resulting from late-stage capitalism.
As Squanto, Rickey fused punk elements with a chaotic blend of electronic noise and beats, all while maintaining connections to pop music. He manipulated trip-hop influences into edgy, pulsating soundscapes. The music videos he created for himself and fellow musicians resembled a surreal, drug-infused late-night infomercial, perhaps created to alleviate the anxieties that such a commercial might evoke. Rickey’s art was simultaneously jarring, bizarre, and enchanting. Despite its darker themes, it radiated a sense of sincerity and even hope.
In a 2015 interview with Fort Worth Weekly regarding Squanto’s debut EP, clrtvdth (pronounced “color TV death”), Rickey expressed his motivation: “I’m driven by what everybody’s paying attention to, getting frustrated about. What is this bullshit we are paying attention to? I’m on the same boat. I’m making music, and I’m affected by it too. We’ve all been affected by it for a long time. We are just now suffering repercussions from it, and for me the music is funny. It’s satirical. I love Frank Zappa. I love all the musicians who saw the humor in things, but I also have a very deep appreciation of musicians who made free-expression music with a little more experimentation, like free jazz, things like that, Ornette Coleman, crazy stuff that never settled down.”
A decade later, the state of the world has not improved, and receiving a missing person alert about Rickey only amplifies my concerns. Anyone with information regarding Rickey Kinney’s whereabouts or current situation is urged to contact the Los Angeles Police Department at 213-996-1800 or the Missing in America anonymous tipline at 844-MIA-LOST (844-642-5678).
