Category: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concerts

Kara Frame | December 10, 2025 It’s rare these days for an artist to ask for fewer microphones, but after warming up in our space, Billy Strings did just that. Surrounded by his band, the bluegrass virtuoso brings back the spirit of Tiny Desk’s early days. We capture, in his own words, “the way these instruments are meant to sound.” “We’ve been lucky to play a lot of cool venues,” Strings says, pausing to reflect. “But this one’s different. It has that same soul to it because — I’ve seen so many amazing performances that happened right here and I [See More…]

Lars Gotrich | December 5, 2025 There’s nothing easy about the laid-back cool of Air’s music. On record and for film soundtracks, the French electronic duo turns distressed dreams into symphonies plucked from cotton candy clouds — sonically light, but heavy with emotion. Yet to see Air’s members perform live, everything seems so effortless. Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel have been looking back on Air’s catalog recently, extending the anniversary tour of their debut album. Surrounded by synths and keys bearing Air’s block-letter logo, the band opens this Tiny Desk with “Le Voyage de Pénélope,” the piano-driven, interstellar fantasia from [See More…]

Ann Powers | December 3, 2025 Brandi Carlile has a way of making any performance feel like a tête-à-tête, a deep emotional exchange between friends that just happens to take place in a crowd. Yet the challenge of bringing songs from her gorgeous new album Returning to Myself to the Tiny Desk still shook her. “It’s the kind of thing that really makes your blood run a little cold,” Carlile says, laying down her acoustic guitar after the gentle “A War with Time.” She then turns to the Roland keyboard mounted on the desktop and begins “A Woman Oversees,” a [See More…]

Robin Hilton | December 1, 2025 David Byrne has a long history of staging elaborate live shows, often with a sprawling cast of musicians, highly choreographed dancing and unusual instrumentation. So when we learned he wanted to have more than a dozen performers at the Tiny Desk, playing everything from cello, saxophone and marimba to a Brazilian timbau and zabumba (not to mention various guitars and keys), we weren’t sure we’d be able to fit it all in. It turns out his latest tour, for the album Who Is The Sky?, is well designed for our roughly 10 by 11-foot [See More…]

Suraya Mohamed | November 24, 2025 This is the very first K-pop band to play behind the Tiny Desk. SEVENTEEN’s name comes from an equation: 13 members + 3 teams + 1 group. Those three teams focus on hip-hop, vocal and performance to come together as one. SEVENTEEN (SVT for short) recently celebrated its 10th anniversary with a world tour, performing in big stadiums for millions of fans (aka Carats). After their last U.S. concert in Washington, D.C., five of the members stopped by the NPR Music office to play in front of what’s likely their smallest audience ever. Bred [See More…]

Robin Hilton | November 21, 2025 When Robert Plant first stepped behind the Tiny Desk on a blustery Halloween afternoon, he took stock of the relatively stripped-down setup. “This is just like Live Aid,” he said with a smile. “I couldn’t hear myself there either.” He was referring to the fact we don’t amplify voices or use monitors so artists can hear themselves. But if ever there was someone up to the challenge, it’s Robert Plant. With a voice that’s only gotten better with age, Plant has deftly moved from the full-throated rock and swagger of Led Zeppelin to the [See More…]

Lars Gotrich | November 19, 2025 Here’s the thing: Goo Goo Dolls songs endure. Formed almost four decades ago, the rock band’s artistic ambition has always been connection — pop anthems that can be blasted from car speakers and in karaoke bars, and sung en masse. These songs stick around, but never wear out their welcome. This set is bookended by songs from Dizzy Up the Girl, the 1998 album that found the sweet spot between catchy arena rockers and heartfelt power ballads. “Slide” is particularly suited to the space as John Rzeznik’s voice, which has aged gracefully into the [See More…]

Robin Hilton | November 13, 2025 I don’t think anyone expected to get a new album from Pulp in 2025, let alone a Tiny Desk. But the much-beloved group, fronted by the singular voice of Jarvis Cocker, returned this spring with More, its first full-length in nearly a quarter century. A couple of months later, the group celebrated with a visit to our D.C. offices for a career-spanning set. Just before making the short walk from our makeshift green room (a converted office) to the Tiny Desk down the hall, the band members held hands and sang, “This will be [See More…]

Bobby Carter | November 5, 2025 There’s often a moment during a Tiny Desk concert when an artist realizes that playing in an office was either the right or wrong thing to do. After starting the set with “Takin’ It to the Streets,” one of The Doobie Brothers’ many hits, Tom Johnston tells the audience, “It’s not like this at gigs. We just played up in New York at Jones Beach last night and y’all are outdoing them. It’s pretty cool.” For a band as accomplished as this to still encounter new experiences as performers says a lot about the [See More…]