Category: Music

Ann Powers | January 17, 2025 The Red Clay Strays is a big band with a future that keeps expanding. In the past few years the Mobile, Ala.-born five-piece has rocketed from club gigs to major stages like Colorado’s Red Rocks and Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on the strength of its joyful interplay and soaring Southern rock sound. It wasn’t a given that the Strays could rein in the grandeur that its fanbase relishes to fit the modest Tiny Desk. But this easy rolling set shows what’s made these longtime road dogs one of the fastest-rising ensembles in any genre right [See More…]

Nikki Birch | January 13, 2025 The first law of soca music, according to Machel Montano, is: “it’s dancing time all the time.” And in his Tiny Desk Concert, the “King of Soca” provides irrefutable evidence to support that statement. Montano’s performance is the first to bring soca, the high energy dance music of the Caribbean, to the Tiny Desk. The genre was born in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 1970s when calypso artist Lord Shorty (who later chose the name Ras Shorty I) added traditional Indian percussion instruments and rhythms to calypso music — itself a fusion that [See More…]

Ashley Pointer | December 20, 2024 When I greeted Sabrina Carpenter at NPR HQ for her Tiny Desk debut, her charm was immediately disarming. Bubbling with excitement, she extended her hand, introduced herself and complimented my outfit with genuine warmth. You’d think this was one of her first “big time” gigs, not a regular performance for a pop veteran, having sold out arenas across the country touring her now six time Grammy-nominated sixth album, Short n’ Sweet. That humility made me love her even more. But Carpenter delivers far more than just charm in this performance. Backed by her band, [See More…]