NPR Music Tiny Desk Concerts

"Good afternoon humans, my name is Sevdaliza, you're very welcome on flight 808; our destination is Shabrang." And so begins our elegant, ethereal journey. We hear an old reel-to-reel tape machine spinning some Brazilian bossa nova sounds, then shift to something more somber. Sevdaliza is seated, the tones are golden and brown, and her yearning voice sings, "I am flesh, bones / I am skin, soul / I am human." The song, "Human," which casts away the notion of artists — particularly female artists — as products. It's a defiant stand from this Iranian-born artist. Sevdaliza is an original, a truly creative soul. Her collaborators play delicate textures — electronic percussion, buzzing, swirling synth sounds, and cello and violin beautifully enhance texture and melody.

From a stunning room overlooking the San Gabriel Mountains in Pasadena, Calif., we hear the ethereal sounds of Active Child. "I chose this space, as this is where I've written nearly every piece of music for my active child project. my music and this house / this view are completely intertwined." Active Child is the music of Patrick Grossi. For his Tiny Desk (home) concert, he layers his choral-styled voice on top of melodic harp and piano. Electronic beats propel selections from his latest album, In Another Life, as well as one of his earliest and well-known songs, "Hanging On," that we featured on NPR Music back in 2011. Active Child makes music like no one else, and this Tiny Desk (home) concert is a perfect way to experience his music.

I don't recall any other artist at the Tiny Desk harmonizing their own introduction, but Philadelphia's own Jazmine Sullivan didn't waste a second, greeting us all by flexing those once-in-a-generation chops from the jump. The singer-songwriter, draped in a trench coat while her band sports all black, are nestled in the corner of a dimly lit space resembling a cabaret. We don't see or hear much from Jazmine Sullivan until she has something to get off her chest. She drops a body of work every five years or so, shakes up the world of R&B with each offering, then quietly goes back to minding her own business. Her latest project, Heaux Tales, is a bold and timely conversation piece addressing truths regarding relationships, sex, social norms, self-worth and a myriad of other topics that women graple with. Each song is masterfully connected to another through unique yet familiar testimonies by women from all walks of life.

The Tiny Desk is teaming up with globalFEST this year for a thrilling virtual music festival: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. The online fest includes four nights of concerts featuring 16 bands from all over the world. Hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo. For our opening night, we have the gospel sounds of the Dedicated Men of Zion, the flamenco and Gypsy jazz-influenced North African sounds of Labess, the award-winning vocalist and songwriter Sofia Rei, who blends Argentine and other South American folk traditions with experimental pop and electronic music, and Tiny Desk alum DakhaBrakha, a Ukranian rock band overflowing with joy and energy.

The Tiny Desk is teaming up with globalFEST this year for a thrilling virtual music festival: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. The online fest includes four nights of concerts featuring 16 bands from all over the world. Hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo. On Tuesday night, we have Minyo Crusaders' new spin on Japanese folk music, Peruvian cumbia music from Hit La Rosa, Natu Camara's combination of West African soul, rock and pop music, and Tunisian singer and activist (and globalFEST Alum) Emel.

The Tiny Desk is teaming up with globalFEST this year for a thrilling virtual music festival: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. The online fest includes four nights of concerts featuring 16 bands from all over the world. Hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo. For the third night of the festival, we have Vox Sambou’s energetic Hatian funk from Montreal, Carnatic Indian music from Aditya Prakash Ensemble, a blend of old and new with Italian singer-songwriter Rachele Andrioli, and an expansion and exploration of American Roots music from globalFEST alum Martha Redbone.

The Tiny Desk is teaming up with globalFEST this year for a thrilling virtual music festival: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. The online fest includes four nights of concerts featuring 16 bands from all over the world. Hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo. For the final night of Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST, we have Edwin Perez's presentation of salsa dura, First Nations advocate and singer-songwriter Elisapie performing in Montreal, 15-year-old Appalachian banjo player Nora Brown, and globalFEST alum Rokia Traoré performing from Mali.

"Hi, I'm mxmtoon, and I'm doing my Tiny Desk at the world's biggest desk!" And so it begins, from an eerily empty New York City office building, mxmtoon sings songs filled with dreams and anxieties. Much of the music comes from her recent 2020 EPs, Dawn and Dusk. Those EPs included collaborations with Carly Rae Jepsen and Tune-Yards' Merrill Garbus. For this Tiny Desk (home) concert, her sweet voice and ukulele are accompanied by Nicole Wakabayashi on piano and Cale Hawkins on guitar.

TH1RT3EN, an irreverent and inflammatory new trio conceived by hip-hop star and lyrical savage Pharoahe Monch, has been in the works for five years. Co-conspirators include Daru Jones, a monster on the drums best known for his work with Jack White, and guitar mercenary Marcus Machado. Both the moniker and supergroup were born out of a frustration with the veneer of American society that underestimates the darkness of white supremacy.

If Gabriel Garzón-Montano's solo Tiny Desk back in 2017 was an exercise in restraint and vulnerability, his home set is the polar opposite. It beams ingenuity and unveils multiple layers, figuratively and literally. Taking advantage of of the rare opportunity to gather musicians in quarantine times, he says "It's like being a child who's allowed to do what they always wanted to do when they didn't wanna get up for school, and it's also felt like an adult who didn't know what to do at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. I'm focusing on oscillating between those states with ease."

Sincerest apologies to Stefan Babcock's neighbors: For PUP's Tiny Desk (home) concert, the Toronto group refused to dial down the volume, filling Babcock's neatly-furnished living room – complete with an Ontario pennant – and just maybe making a few enemies down the street in the process.

There's a distinct dissonance between the bucolic setting of this lovely Max Richter Tiny Desk (home) concert and the reality he references after his performance. "Looking forward to the time when gigs can come back and we can do this for real," the composer says, leaving us with a yearning that is borne out in his tranquil, probing music. These half-dozen short pieces can offer two very different modes of experience. Shot in artful black and white, their simplicity and beauty invite us into a world as we once knew it, where fresh air wafts through open doors and dogs peacefully snooze (canine cameos by Evie and Haku) in the late summer sunshine in southern England. On the other hand, the chaos found in the real world we know today can find a balm in Richter's soothing, oscillating figures in "Infra 3" or the gently swaying chords of "Origins," where the music lumbers in the lower half of the keyboard.

It's been 10 years since the band Future Islands performed its first Tiny Desk concert. Now its four members are gathered not too far from their Baltimore base in Carroll Baldwin Memorial Hall, sans desk. "We lost the desk," singer Sam Herring tells us with a smile. With drummer Michael Lowry on the tiny stage, the rest of the band — including bassist William Cashion and Gerrit Welmers on electronics — took to the floor, allowing Sam Herring to make his moves and sing his heart out. This music is clearly for the head and the feet.

These days it's nice to have an audience cheer you on, even if it's just the lighting crew. Burgeoning Jamaican soul singer Sevana and her six-piece band shot and recorded this Tiny Desk (home) concert at the Kingston Creative Hub back in September 2020 (the interludes you'll hear about the pandemic are reflective of that time). Sevana, a member of Protoje's In.Digg.Nation collective, showcases her vocal range by jumping delicately between traditional R&B, Caribbean gospel and soul, with touches of reggae interspersed.

There's an elegant vibe as Lous and The Yakuza perform a Tiny Desk from the Book Bar in the Hôtel Grand Amour in Paris. And while the music is smooth, upbeat and warm, what lies beneath in Lous backstory, in her French lyrics, is, at times, deep and disturbing.

Miley Cyrus has always understood that music is theater. So it's no surprise that, visiting the imaginative space that is the Tiny Desk, she transforms it into something both fantastical and true to her topsy-turvy Mileyness. Cyrus ruled preteen hearts on the small screen before mastering pop stardom's big stages, and throughout her career she's played with sound and image in unexpected and even controversial ways. And she's never balanced pop's glorious artifice with her own soulful authenticity more self-assuredly than she does on her latest album, the rock and roll manifesto Plastic Hearts.

Muzz are dear, old friends who make fuzzy, thoughtful songs. So when they gathered at Reade's Old Kingston Theater in New York's Hudson Valley after seven months of separation, minus hugs and wearing masks, I trust it was joyful but also kind of awkward. Paul Banks and Josh Kaufman have known each other since childhood. You likely know Paul Banks as the singer for Interpol; Josh Kaufman is a producer and one-third of Bonny Light Horseman. They are both friends with drummer Matt Barrick, who played a Tiny Desk concert in 2012 with his band The Walkmen.

Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra Septet recorded their Tiny Desk (home) concert at Dizzy's Club, or what they call "the house of swing." It begins with "Sloganize, Patronize, Realize, Revolutionize (Black Lives Matters)," a bold statement about humanity and the consequences of racism. Marsalis says this piece — as well as the rest of the music on his new album, The Democracy! Suite -- deals with the timeless human issues we see exacerbated during the times of the pandemic, like social challenges and matters of the heart.

Candles and books rest on a trunk at the bottom right corner of the wide shot. There, too, are special photographs of alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins with family in his childhood home in Philadelphia. "One of the brightest things about this pandemic was going home to spend time with my mother, father and grandmother after being on the road for a while," Wilkins told NPR recently.

Within the warm walls of Williamsburg Music Center, one of Brooklyn's last surviving black-owned jazz venues, Melanie Charles takes us on a journey that embodies the soul of jazz: exploration. A Brooklynite proud of her rich Haitian heritage, Charles is conscious of the giant shoulders upon which she stands and takes steps to both honor and advance this music. Behind her, smiling pictures of her guardian angels, Mary Lou Williams and Billie Holiday, encourage Charles while she and her musicians blend the mystique of Haitian folk music with the sorrowful optimism of negro spirituals and the free space for elevation that jazz improvisation allows.

"Just bear with me while I just enjoy this and soak in it," GIVĒON admits with a laugh. Switching between the demeanors of a seasoned, nonchalant crooner and a giddy-grinned newbie, the fast-rising R&B star makes a point to show his humility during his long-awaited debut at Tiny Desk. Accompanied by a minimal, masked-up band and only one background vocalist (a fellow Pisces at that), the baby-face baritone fills the set with resonance and light. He radiates gratitude with every note. Against a blue, moody backsplash of projected music video stills, GIVĒON notes the divine timing of this performance. "Any moment to do this would be special," he says between songs, "but I think Black History Month ... just celebrating Black culture for this month, I'm really excited to get to do this on this platform."

Meshell Ndegeocello's Tiny Desk (home) concert feels like a narrative film. Shot in vivid black and white, the concert includes songs from throughout her career framed by her thoughts on the importance and influence of James Baldwin: "He deserves flowers every day. Most of all because he was willing to discuss things that were painful, hard to look at, hard to see, hard to accept."

Cornrows braided back with the precision of an architect. Stiletto nails commanding a sampling machine. Gold-glinted lids to match her light-up Beads Byaree earrings. With every move, KeiyaA shines so bright, it's impossible to look away. And while your eyes are fixated on her person, the music KeiyaA conjures inside Brooklyn's Electric Garden is what leaves you completely spellbound.

Xavier Omär decided to turn his Tiny Desk home concert into a whole Texas affair. Initially, Omär wanted to recreate the look of the Desk: "I wanted to kind of bring the feeling of Tiny Desk back, so I had booked a library," he said. Ultimately the library didn't work out, but Rosella Coffee and Wine in his home base of San Antonio proved to be a great match for his sound--spacious and airy.

Rick Ross’ Tiny Desk takes place in the gallery space of Miami artist Rich B Caliente, The Boss’ longtime collaborator and friend. Even though the MIA street dignitary is now living in Atlanta, Ross insisted that his Tiny Desk (home) concert get captured in the city where his roots are anchored and where he rose to rap stardom.

"There are a lot of people who have been moving the needle forward for Black people. And they have been for some time," says an earnest, almost plaintive 2 Chainz. In a heart-filled sermon, he cites Martin Luther King Jr., Tyler Perry and Puffy as trailblazers, practicing gratitude for Black leaders who inspire him and the world at large. It's a sober moment of euphoria — and a drastic shift from the first 17 minutes of the Grammy winner's flashy Tiny Desk.

If you were to apply one of those "how it started / how it's going" memes to Tiny Desk (home) concerts — which began, it turns out, almost exactly one year ago — you'd have, under "how it's going," the image of pop superstar Justin Bieber as he and his band perform the world premiere of a new song called "Peaches."

"Tiny Desk! Happy Black History Month!," rapper, singer and songwriter Rae Khalil exclaims before gliding into "FATHER," from her LP Fortheworld. From the confines of Harun Coffee in the historic Leimert Park neighborhood of South Los Angeles comes one of the most exhilarating Tiny Desk home concerts I've ever seen. Khalil's set is a colorful explosion of talent, perfectly complimenting the funky patchwork and textures of her attire.

Bartees Strange and his band are in a basement, surrounded by electrical wiring and DIY sound-proofing, but also green plants that no doubt have names. In Falls Church, Va., the indie rocker is a stone's throw from the much-missed Tiny Desk space in D.C., yet offers a set just as cozy and crammed.

Music icon Sting returns to Tiny Desk with a new collaborator in tow, and the story is heartwarming. During the pandemic, Beninese pop star Shirazee adapted his own rendition of Sting's classic "Englishman in New York" into "African in New York." His version made its way to Sting, who loved it so much that he asked Shirazee to lend his voice to his Tiny Desk (home) concert and record for his new Duets album.

"Freedom is what we feel when we perform. And freedom is what the world is in need of right now. In this pandemic it feels like we all need a sense of freedom." Sampa Tembo is in Lusaka, Zambia, her landlocked African home country. She's better known as Sampa The Great, an understated title. In her Tiny Desk (home) concert, the poet, rapper and singer-songwriter delivers evidence that it's more like Sampa the Greatest.

Liam Bailey is the type of artist that makes our jobs easy at the Tiny Desk. I can imagine him arriving at NPR headquarters early, guitar in tow, ready to bang out a three-song set in one take as staffers gather, fireside chat-style. That's what his home concert felt like. Wiping the sweat from his brow between songs, he exclaims, "We're not doing no studio productions. We're keeping it real. Keeping it raw."

Nigerian Afrobeats star Davido comes to us from his estate in Lagos with an intimate four-song performance that takes us on a mini-retrospective of his career. He and his band create a sultry vibe with a unique rendition of "Gobe," his smash 2013 single, to open the set.

Kirk Franklin, set up with his band and choir in a corner of Uncle Jessie's Kitchen, makes a declaration. "I know you're at home right now, in your draws, listening to some Jesus music. It's ok. Jesus loves you in your draws!" The Arlington, Texas studio, named after a long time close friend, features a large photo of the iconic "I AM A MAN" protest signs from the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike on the wall. The jubilant energy that Franklin and company emit, juxtaposed with a visual reminder of the strife that Black people have endured is illustrative of the importance of gospel music in the Black community.

Jack Harlow's Tiny Desk (home) concert feels like the arrival of a rap superstar. Tucked in a homey-looking space in Los Angeles surrounded by bookshelves and vintage furniture, the Louisville, Ky., emcee delivers a performance with the confidence of an old pro. His set, however, is the first time he's relied solely on live instrumentation to bring his songs to life. "It's been a long time since I had a chance to perform and I've never done it like this," he says.

Using an Edison "Fireside" cylinder phonograph and his own Stratus music software, Ólafur Arnalds' Tiny Desk (home) concert brings the past and the future into a heartfelt performance. Filmed in his tree-lined studio in Reykjavík, Iceland (the former studio of Sigur Rós), Ólafur and his string quartet perform three songs from my personal No. 1 album of 2020, some kind of peace. The pensive set opens with an older tune, "Happiness Does Not Wait," with Ólafur Arnalds seated at a short upright piano known as a Danish 'pianette.'

"I'm Robin Pecknold from Fleet Foxes. Thank you so much for asking me to find the tiniest desk I could, and sing unadorned for the first time in too long." With his guitar and that unadorned voice, Robin Pecknold performs four songs from Fleet Foxes' 2020 album, Shore. It's an album that pays homage to some of the greats that we've lost — some more recently, including David Berman and Richard Swift, and some long gone but still influential, like Elliott Smith, Curtis Mayfield, Jimi Hendrix and Judee Sill. Robin wrote the songs while driving in the Catskills and (as you hear on "Going-to-the-Sun Road") Montana, a place that feels like home.

Over the years, African musicians have elevated expectations at the Tiny Desk. The distinctive vibrations left by artists like Burna Boy, KOKOKO! and the Soweto Gospel Choir have lead to some of the most unforgettable moments in our rich history. This (home) concert feels like the culmination of all of those moments.

Black Coffee, a figurehead of the global South African dance movement, is known for his undeniable DJ sets and AfroHouse anthems that (under normal circumstances) light up dancefloors around the world. He brings that same feeling to his Tiny Desk (home) concert, but with a unique configuration: live instrumentation.

The back of a van on a sunny day holding an acoustic guitar is a far cry from the usual setting where I'd see Buck Meek. More likely, I'd be in a dark club; Buck's intense electric guitar and backing vocals are a part of what makes up my favorite rock band these days, Big Thief. But here, home is Buck's Toyota Land Cruiser in Topanga Canyon, Calif.; Buck Meek is singing about the clouds and his favorite new word, pareidolia, which also happens to be the opening track to his 2021 album, Two Saviors.

Across hemispheres, despite a nearly 8,000-mile separation, the Saskatoon, Canada duo of cousins Kacy & Clayton and New Zealand's Marlon Williams manage to create harmony and intimacy. The Tiny Desk (home) concert, on the surface, is joyful and playful with animated illustrations by Daniel Syrnick. But a careful listen to "Plastic Bouquet," the title track to the 2020 collaboration between Kacy Lee Anderson, Clayton Linthicum, and Marlon Williams, reveals a depth of storytelling more familiar in murder ballads than the trio's upbeat Americana sound.

We've posted close to 200 Tiny Desk (home) concerts in this insane pandemic year. Few have made me smile and laugh out loud as much as this one from Steady Holiday. I'll stop with the spoilers now. Steady Holiday is the music of Dre Babinski. This video, filmed for our virtual SXSW showcase, finds her by the fireplace, a dog at her feet, an acoustic guitar in her arms. Steady Holiday is singing "Living Life," a tune about a favorite topic of mine: the everyday, the mundane, and living in the moment. All the songs in this Tiny Desk (home) concert are from Steady Holiday's 2021 album Take The Corners Gently, a top album of mine this year. Laughing while her dog grabs a chew toy, she performs the album's opening track, "White Walls,", a song about self-reflection and how doing the same thing over and over ("painting white walls white") won't make life better.

If only I could have experienced Yasser Tejeda and Palotré at one of the bars along Austin's Sixth Street. Tejeda, a New York-based guitarist from the Dominican Republic, started his musical career on the Dominican cuatro (a folkloric guitar-like instrument) and has incorporated guitar stylings that have made him a "go-to guy" for Dominican artists looking for passionate elegance in their sound. Yasser Tejeda and his band Palotré begin their set behind a home desk with "Amor Arrayano," weaving a vaguely Caribbean feel with a killer R&B hook. After a brief introduction of his bandmates Tejeda launches into "La Culebra," the track that caught my attention from their album Kijombo. Palotré is a powerful groove machine behind Tejeda's virtuosic guitar playing and his playful dance moves.

DUCKWRTH decided to do something special for Tiny Desk Meets SXSW: brand new music. "Welcome to my Tiny Desk," he says. "We are gonna play some new songs for y'all if that's OK. Y'all ain't got no choice!" The dynamic R&B singer proceeded to debut two exclusives: a slow jam titled "make u go," which he dedicates to the "lovers and freaks," and the upbeat "Birthday Suit," which KCRW astutely compared to Estelle's "American Boy."

Leave it to clipping. to innovate around the central notion of the Tiny Desk; to take the series' emphasis on close-up intimacy and transport it to new heights of, well, tininess. This is, after all, a band that contains multitudes. Producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes craft a bed of hip-hop, industrial music and noisy experimentalism, then set loose rapper Daveed Diggs, whose violent imagery summons '90s horrorcore and a thousand bloody movies. The band's last two album titles — There Existed an Addiction to Blood and Visions of Bodies Being Burned — offer up a sense of the vibe, but Diggs' gift for rapid-fire wordplay also acts as a leavening agent. The guy won a Tony Award for playing Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette in Hamilton, and he still knows how to sell every word that leaves his lips.

Nathaniel Rateliff stands in an old familiar place, sharing his pain. The Mercury Café is one of the first places Nathaniel frequented when he moved to Denver in 1998, hearing jazz, dancing, and eventually playing many shows there. For his Tiny Desk (home) concert, he's assembled a dozen players including a string section, backing singers, and some of his oldest friends: Joseph Pope III on bass, Mark Shusterman on keys, Luke Mossman on guitar and Patrick Meese on drums. On the opening song and the title track to his 2020 album, And It's Still Alright, they're restrained as Nathaniel sings about loss, including his friend and producer Richard Swift, but he's holding on. "I'll be damned if this old man / Don't start to counting his losses / But it's still alright."

A few years ago, some of us on the NPR Music team stumbled upon a copy of Demi Lovato's 2013 book, Staying Strong: 365 Days A Year. Reading Lovato's heartfelt daily reflections became a workday habit; her transparency and vulnerability made us ardent admirers who wanted nothing but the very best for Demi. We made it our mission to get Demi to the Tiny Desk, and though the pandemic had other plans, Lovato's Tiny Desk (home) concert was worth the wait. Recorded on a sunny spring day in her Los Angeles backyard, Lovato begins with a moving rendition of "Tell Me You Love Me" from her 2017 record of the same name, accompanied by subtle, sparse keys. She continues her set with the title tracks from her recently-released studio album, Dancing With The Devil...The Art Of Starting Over. On both tracks, Lovato's voice feels stabilizing and grounding; there's a sense of clarity and purpose in its power.

For the Tiny Desk (home) concert series, 'home' can mean many things. For CJ Camerieri and his project CARM, home is where the art is. He performed his concert at the Pablo Center in Eau Claire, Wisc., where the trumpeter and French horn player conceived and recorded all the songs for his 2021 debut solo album, CARM. "This particular community has been a really big part of my musical life for 10 years," CJ says after playing the calming tune "Soft Night," "so it seems like the perfect place to be doing this."

As usual, Rina Sawayama is one step ahead of us. She's back in the office, clad in a periwinkle blazer with waist cut-outs and a high ponytail cleaner than the view of the city skyline. Make no mistake: even in fluorescent lighting, the Japanese British pop star performs with the same tenacity and drama you hear in her 2020 debut album, SAWAYAMA, a lustrous pop epic peppered with early aughts R&B, nu-metal and classic rock.

C. Tangana's extended family basking in the warmth of sobremesa with easy smiles and effortless baile looks otherworldly after more than 13 months amid a global pandemic. But considering the Spanish rapper's past year back home in Madrid, the simplicity feels fiercely authentic. (Check his mama and tía vibing in the corner.)

Butcher Brown takes to a restaurant's rooftop terrace in the band's hometown of Richmond, Va., for a home concert and sizzles from the first note. The band opens with "Sticky July," a tune every bit as catchy as its name implies; think rollerskating with a popsicle under a cloudless sky of blue. When you think you've figured it out, keyboardist DJ Harrison switches it up, launching into a solo so funky you wonder if it's a new song, that is until Marcus "Tennishu" Tenney brings us back home with some sweet trumpet.

Lake Street Dive filmed its Tiny Desk (home) concert where the band is most at home: on stage at the “biggest little venue in NYC,” Pete’s Candy Store. All five band members managed to squeeze onto a stage no larger than the actual Tiny Desk to shine a spotlight on the Save Our Stages Act. Congress passed the $15 billion grant program last December as part of the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill. In the middle of the home concert, bassist Bridget Kearney recalls driving to the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn for a gig at Pete’s, then driving back to Boston the very same night, long before they ever sold out Radio City Music Hall on the other side of the East River.

"¡Tú sabes!" Carlos "Tostao" Valencia exclaims after Colombian hip-hop trio ChocQuibTown performs its first song, the energetic "Somos Pacífico." "ChocQuibTown, straight from Colombia, from the Pacific coast," he says. "We call it Africa inside Colombia, we got the flavor, we got the flow." ChocQuibTown — named after the coastal area the trio hails from — is a family affair comprised of siblings Miguel "Slow" Martinez and Gloria "Goyo" Martinez, the latter of which is married to Valencia. In 2000, the trio formed to promote their neglected corner of Colombia's culture; today, ChocoQuibTown's music blends the traditionality of Afro-Latin jazz with the modernity of hip-hop to create a singular, yet versatile sound.

Watch this stunning "home" Tiny Desk performance from Son Lux and you might conclude the band members live together in an all-white universe without walls or boundaries. But it's all an illusion. In fact, guitarist Rafiq Bhatia, drummer Ian Chang and singer-keyboardist Ryan Lott, who started Son Lux as a solo project back in 2008, each shot their own, separate video with their iPhones, at different times, at their homes scattered across different states. So did the guest vocalists, Nina Moffitt and Kiah Victoria. Editor Evan Chapman then stitched all the videos together.

When D.R.A.M. played the Tiny Desk back in 2017, he made a couple of things clear to us: His playfully dynamic personality was primed for the spotlight, and beneath the catchy hooks, there's a real singer waiting to come out. For his Tiny Desk (home) concert, he does a complete 180. "It's like a new beginning. Full circle. So this time, call me Shelley." he says, following the opening track, "Exposure." Everything is new. Silk pajamas and slippers replace the trench coat and plush beanie, and thanks to lifestyle changes, he's slimmed down quite a bit and goes by his government name now: Shelley.

The first song Rod Wave performs in his Tiny Desk concert comes with a bit of a wink. The St. Petersburg, Fla., rapper interpolates Drake's "Over My Dead Body," the delicate intro to Take Care. Like Drake, Rod Wave makes sad, melodic rap music. But his feels removed from the Canadian superstar's lineage. His cadences are more in step with the full-bodied crooning of Southern rap giants like Kevin Gates and Lil Boosie. It's been said that Rod Wave could be an R&B or blues singer in another era. With this Tiny Desk concert, anchored by the interplay of flute, piano, bass and drums, he seems to suggest: Why not this one?

With warm maroon box braids nearly sweeping the floor and glitter adorning her eyes, NENNY's presence demands full attention before she even opens her mouth. Dressed in a flowy, all-white outfit accented with a pastel checker pattern and surrounded by a matching four-piece band, the 18-year-old Portuguese singer-songwriter and rapper appears otherworldly, almost heavenly, as she harmonizes with her backing electric guitar and jumps across the room, dancing with her entire body. NENNY first appeared on heads' radar in 2019 with her single "Sushi." She's continued to impress with several more singles and the release of her debut project, 2020's Aura.

"I feel that we are living in a crazy moment in a crazy time and music has been a safe place for me — the only safe place for me," Luedji Luna says in a low, alluring voice as she explains the purpose of her latest album, Bom Mesmo É Estar Debaixo D'Água. The album, much like the Brazillian singer-songwriters's Tiny Desk performance, is a respite from these times. Elements of jazz and blues are infused with African rhythms as Luna uses music to express her ongoing struggles for autonomy as a Black woman. She performs from her coastal hometown of Bahia in the city of Salvador, Brazil, where African culture flows in abundance. Luna is a powerhouse, entrancing and elegant, soulful and spiritual, as she uses her platform to discuss individual and systemic forms of anti-Blackness.

From her hometown of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Calma Carmona delivers a bewitching Tiny Desk performance. Her voice rarely rises above a whisper as she sings over impassioned Afrobeats during her three-song set — but when it does, it's a gritty, intimidating growl. Carmona got her start in 2013 when the Latin soul singer-songwriter released her first EP and opened for Beyoncé's The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour in Puerto Rico.

I'm a little envious of those of you about to press play on this Tiny Desk (home) concert. The first time I heard this Argentine duo was love at first sight. Vocalist and upright bassist Cande Buasso and keyboardist Paulo Carrizo are from San Juan, Argentina, a very small town nestled by the Andes close to Chile. I like to imagine that the secluded location contributes to the magic and nuance of the very personal musical language the two have developed since forming the duo in 2017.

It may at first seem that Negativland's sound collage is an unlikely candidate for a Tiny Desk concert, but honestly, how many bands can you think of making music since the late 1970s while sitting pretty much at their desks? Formed in the Bay Area, Negativland are proud subverters of culture, causing trouble while having fun.

The Church Studios in North London is an institution, home to some of the most iconic records of the last three decades, including Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) and Adele's 25. From the hallowed Neve Room, Moses Boyd and his band remind us that the U.K. jazz scene still bangs. They also remind us that COVID-19 regulations are much stricter across the pond: physical distancing is the name of the game in this at home concert.

Ani DiFranco has always done things her way, and for this Tiny Desk (home) concert, she’s a one-woman team, filming and recording herself in the front hall of her New Orleans home and studio, Big Blue. The not-so-tiny desk you see in the hallway was her great grandfather’s. Other personal items seen as we scan her home include a purple painting of a tree by her cousin Jim Mott and a portrait of a woman and ghostly girl by a painter named Renata. At the time of this recording, Ani was planning to move after more than 10 years at Big Blue, so this concert is likely one of the last performances to take place in that space.

This is so enchanting. The painted scrim, the scenery trees are not only a setting for Sara Watkins and her bandmates, but we also discover a "magic desk." And as Sara lifts the desk's top, we hear a guitar playing an alluring melody; in fact, it's Harry Nilsson's dreamy song "Blanket For a Sail." I admired Sara's talents first as a fiddler, guitarist and singer playing in Nickel Creek, then her solo work, and much later with the trio I'm With Her. However, none of her music, even her solo recordings, ever sounded quite like the music on this Tiny Desk (home) concert. The songs are from her new album, Under the Pepper Tree.

While many of us have gotten better at using technology to feel close to our friends and collaborators over the past year, there's still no replacement for being in the same room as someone who you swear can read your mind. That's what it feels like to watch punk band Palberta, whose music makes magic out of repeated phrases sung in tight harmony and charmingly zany pop hooks. For its Tiny Desk (home) concert, shot on a MiniDV and a Hi8, the band crams into one member's Philly basement for a set that's a testament to the group's tight-knit collaboration and playful exuberance.

From a house in East Nashville, Kathleen Edwards sings about how thankful she is for those early aughts when she was praised with awards, television appearances, touring to packed venues — even if the tour bus with the bed in back was "total crap." As she continues to sing "Glenfern," the opening track to her first album in eight years as well as this Tiny Desk (home) concert, she remembers her former husband and collaborator.

Laurie Anderson is a revolutionary artist who has mixed storytelling, music and technology for the past four decades plus. This Tiny Desk (home) concert celebrates the truly breathtaking breakthrough album she put out in 1982, Big Science. On that record, she used a few different voice processors; one of them was a Vocoder. By singing into a microphone attached to a keyboard, you can hear how it effectively adds harmony to her voice on "Let x=x." Laurie Anderson also used that effect, creating what I think of as 'the voice of authority' in her storytelling, on "O Superman," a song unlike anything music I'd heard when it came out in 1981. She made use of a vocal loop, something ever-present these days in sampling, but here she uses an Eventide Harmonizer, looping the single syllable "ha" as the rhythm of the song. It's a song about dealing with the technological revolution, about compassion; if it's your first time hearing it, take it in and see what strikes you.

Get ready for some fiery desert guitar-shredding, Saharan style, with the music of Mdou Moctar. Producer and American bassist Mikey Coltun told me that "the concert was filmed outside of the house we were all staying at in Niamey, Niger, in November/December 2020." He continued, "As with any sort of musical happenings in the region, once some music is blasted, that's an invitation for anyone to come join, sing, clap, dance, and just come together as a community. We wanted to present the Tiny Desk exactly like this, from when we started playing to finally the energy growing with fans crowded around filming on their cell phones and passing around Tuareg tea."

Deep Sea Diver's Jessica Dobson didn't neglect the details for the group's Tiny Desk (home) concert. For starters, she sported an impressive homemade bolo tie that she crafted from an NPR enamel pin and "a little bit of duct tape." She also chose a very particular location for the shoot: "There were countless times this past year that I wanted to be transported out of my house and into a different world," the singer and guitarist explains to NPR via email. "One of my favorite and most inspiring worlds is that of David Lynch's Twin Peaks. I wanted to pay homage to the show by recreating the red room for our Tiny Desk."

Since last year, many musicians have had to confront their own version of the "if a tree falls in a forest" thought experiment: If you release a new album but can't tour, will the music still resonate for listeners stuck at home? On their superb 2020 album, Skeletons, Brothers Osborne — a country duo that's long challenged the conventions of country and still managed to top the charts — intentionally turned up the volume to create a stadium-sized sound. The problem? "We put it out and performed it nowhere," John Osborne told Morning Edition.

Colombian reggaetonera Karol G floats between styles on this wistful Miami set with the breeziness of a pop star who knows no boundaries – or maybe it's the calculus of an artist who has built a career on subverting them. Her personal, unapologetic flourish has allowed her to top the Billboard charts of a genre with limited female participation, and even less superstardom.

Latino hip-hop legend Fat Joe muscled his way out of the streets of the South Bronx with his debut album, Represent, in 1993. He radiates a different energy in 2021, sauntering in his own uptown streetwear shop, fresh fitted in pink leather and a designer bucket hat, but he's still got that old larger-than-life electricity.

There's a comfort to be found singing in a bathroom; we all sound better with our voices bouncing off the tiles. For Sasha Spielberg, a.k.a. Buzzy Lee, she took it a step further, recording her Tiny Desk (home) concert in her childhood bathroom, which her parents decorated with images of fairytales.

If you’ve ever seen a Hold Steady show, then you know it’s an experience, complete with communal singalongs and confetti. But for its first-ever full-band Tiny Desk appearance, the group squeezed behind a cramped backstage corner of the Brooklyn Bowl, COVID mask protocol in place (“Unusual times, unusual measures,” Craig Finn explains).

We're publishing this Tom Jones Tiny Desk (home) concert on his 81st birthday. It's a poignant moment in the life of a singer whose career spans 56 years and more than 100 million records sold; the passing of his wife, Linda, in 2016 after 59 years of marriage was devastating and resulted in the longest break between recordings of his career. But now Tom Jones is back with a new album, Surrounded By Time, and ready to share his deepest feelings, channeling songs by others with a voice still rich and muscular. It's a triumphant return to the Tiny Desk (his first visit was in 2009), and it's the first time he's performed these songs since recording them last year.

My great-grandmother always used to say, "Life is a train. People get on. People get off." And it just keeps going. Watching Rostam's Tiny Desk performance, it's easy to imagine you're on that life-train, traveling around and around, catching glimpses of instruments and faces as they pass by, before coming back where you started. It's a clever, if sometimes dizzying nod to the overarching themes of Rostam's Changephobia, a collection of songs that simultaneously look to the past and the future.

Merry Clayton's Tiny Desk concert begins with the essentials. After a brief piano intro, she begins to sing "Beautiful Scars" — the title track of her new album — in a powerful and knowing voice. That simple pairing commands attention: "I've been on the battlefield of life. / I've been through it. / But I just had to go through that to get to this." She sings in dialogue with five superb singers, all with serious gospel chops — including members of The Waters and Take 6 — and a band of seasoned pros. "Stand up and be proud of your scars," she sings. The vibe is relaxed, but purposeful.

"My love called me many names," Joseph Keckler sings in "GPS Song," which opens his Tiny Desk (home) concert. He proceeds to list them: "Baby animal. Little baby animal. Big baby animal. Black chicken." (It goes on like this for some time.)

From a rustic and retro-looking cabin on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, the band Men I Trust seized the essence of the Tiny Desk almost to a tee. The controlled, yet layered four-song set, bookended by tracks from 2019's Oncle Jazz would almost certainly make for a plug-and-play situation had it been behind Bob Boilen's desk.

The studio backdrop of this Tiny Desk (home) concert is the perfect setting for the dynamic duo headlining this project. Pino Palladino is a prolific bassist whose sound you're already intimately acquainted with (even if you don't know it). Blake Mills, a guitarist and two-time Grammy nominee for producer of the year, has an impressive catalog of his own. Together, in the studio, the topshelf sidemen are in their element, distilling the sonic creativity that is the first release under Palladino's name, Notes With Attachments.

The trio of country superstar Miranda Lambert, long-tenured recording artist Jack Ingram and acclaimed songwriter-producer Jon Randall have history together: After collaborating on "Tin Man" from Lambert's 2016 record The Weight Of These Wings and "Tequila Does" from 2019's Wildcard, the artists spent five days last November recording in Marfa, Texas. In this (home) concert, the trio turns its quarantine album, The Marfa Tapes, into a quarantine Tiny Desk set, complete with a well-appointed desk in the corner of the frame.

Liz Phair's music was always meant to fill arenas. After a clever sleight-of-hand at the top of this Tiny Desk (home) performance, where it briefly seems we've returned to in-person sets behind Bob Boilen's desk, Phair and her backing band do their best to recreate the kind of set you'd see in a much larger space; everyone plugs-in, turns it up and rocks with an impressive light show.

Our Tiny Desk (home) concerts have visited many faraway places – from Lang Lang in China to Mdou Moctar in Niger – but none as far-flung as Easter Island. The 63-square-mile isle, called Rapa Nui by its residents, is located some 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile.

The Tiny Desk managed to stay nimble during the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to our (home) concert series and the musicians who were determined to make moves in quarantine. Creative souls found myriad ways to get their art to the masses via live streams and social media while also conjuring new ways to collaborate and connect to audiences. Over the past year and some change, beatmakers Carrtoons, Kaelin Ellis, Kiefer, and The Kount took to social media individually and often collaboratively to cook up productions, often resulting in viral moments and never-seen-before glimpses into their creative process.

It's been said that our young people are the hope of our future. If that's true, the future of classical music looks blazingly bright, judging from these extraordinary performances by the young musicians in this triple-play Tiny Desk (home) concert. Teenagers from three locales around the country – Chicago, St. Louis and Palo Alto, Calif. – invite us into their homes for fresh takes on vintage classics, contemporary sounds and sophisticated pop arrangements. They are all alums of From the Top, the radio program (distributed by NPR) that spotlights today's terrific young players.

You don't have to wait long for a signature Sleater-Kinney moment in the band's Tiny Desk (home) concert. Over the first half of the title track to Path of Wellness, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein sing of human frailty and self-improvement, vibrating with low notes of disgust. Then Brownstein shoots Tucker a knowing smile as they sing, "You could never love me enough," and the pair, who have been making music together for nearly 30 years, start to unwind things: Brownstein hisses "I am on a path of wellness" through gritted teeth before ripping into a four-note riff that feels like it's pulling your guts out; Tucker sets her voice at maybe 75 percent howl capacity to sing "I feel like I'm unknown" and Brownstein still has to raise a hand to steady herself against the force. She can't stop grinning.

Up until now, Dry Cleaning's post-Brexit post-punk relied on a robust dynamism of jagged, thudding lushness and a speak-song voice. It's music that coos and quizzes at once. How energizing to hear Dry Cleaning recontextualize its established sound for a relatively subdued Tiny Desk performance from World of Echo, a record store in East London beloved to the British band.

Black Motion's Tiny Desk (home) concert, recorded at the former residence of Nelson Mandela, feels like a spiritual sound bath. The South African production duo turntablist Bongani Mohosana of the Zulu tribe and percussionist Thabo Mabogwane of Sotho tribe — open their set with "Mayibuye iAfrica," a cry for Africa to return to its culture and history. This Afro-House set is brought to life thanks to several featured vocalists and guest musicians. Afro-House has spread joy and healing across the country of South Africa, transcending local boundaries to become a thriving global dance phenomenon. In my experience, Its indigenous sounds and percussive rhythms drench the soul and heart with healing powers and cultivate communion with the infinite.

I don't think I've ever used the word "fierce" to describe a Tiny Desk, but that's precisely what JAMBINAI has created in this (home) concert. The show begins in front of a massive recreation of my desk and what happens next ... well, no spoilers here. Filmed in an immersive media art museum created by an organization known as d'strict on Jeju Island, this Korean band contains multitudes. At its heart, JAMBINAI's music mixes elements of metal, noise and Korean tradition. There's full-on distorted guitar, bass and drums, but also a haegeum (a fiddle-like instrument), a piri (a type of flute), a taepyeongso (a reed instrument) and a most appropriately named instrument, a geomungo (a giant Korean zither). We also hear some delicate vocals in the mix.

Both as producer extraordinaire and artist in his own right, Jack Antonoff has had an outsized impact on the past decade in pop. And yet, even with such maximalist aims, Antonoff clearly understands the effectiveness of scale: that the most enduring tracks are often intimate portraits.

Lucy Dacus sits at a very special desk for this Tiny Desk (home) concert. And though she's played the NPR Tiny Desk twice — first in 2016 and a few years later with Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers as boygenius — the desk at Maggie L. Walker Governor's School likely holds deeper memories. Much of her third album, Home Video, is centered on her school years in Richmond, Va., and the friendships formed and shattered there. During those high school years, she met her musical mate, guitarist Jacob Blizard (seated on the right side of the screen), and the audio engineer capturing all these songs, Collin Pastore.

There's a desk and a band playing songs filled with nature's imagery somewhere in the woods of Mulmur in Southern Ontario, Canada. It's the perfect setting for The Weather Station. Outdoor locations are familiar to anyone who's seen recent videos for "Robber," "Parking Lot," "Tried to Tell You" and "Atlantic," all songs from the band's fourth album, Ignorance, and all songs performed here for its Tiny Desk (home) concert. Songwriter and singer Tamara Lindeman told NPR Music's Marissa Lorusso of her deep feelings on the climate crisis: "I just basically fell down the rabbit hole that happens to you when you take in the full reality of what it means, and what two degrees [of warming] means and how far over the cliff we already are." And so the songs for this Tiny Desk (home) concert are filled with imagery of nature and our relationship with our planet.

Tori Zietsch, aka Maple Glider, is in her Australian home surrounded by her bandmates and friends. Comforting landscape paintings cover the walls: Tori's first vinyl album, Melanie's 1971 album Gather Me, hangs alongside the pictures. She fingerpicks her guitar and sings "Mama It's Christmas," the closing track to her debut album, To Enjoy Is the Only Thing. As she sings the words: "Oh it's Christmas time again / Where is my brother / Where is my friend / Mama it's Christmas time, again / Doesn't he know I've got ribbons to wrap him in." Looking at the camera's wide shot, I sense her watching bandmates and those landscape paintings morph into a warm, comforting blanket.

At the midpoint of Vince Staples' Tiny Desk (home) concert, he gazes through the sun-soaked windows of his Hollywood Hills location and pauses. "You should see this view – I don't live here," he exclaims with pride. "I would never live here." As to why he wouldn't give in to the spoils of success and relocate to a fancy spot in the Hills or Calabasas, he explains in the lyrics of the song that follows, "THE SHINING": I could never do it / I'm too active. That sentiment, the push-pull relationship with his North Long Beach home base, is a dominant theme of his new self-titled album, which he tells NPR is "the clearest expression yet of who he is."

Young Thug looks right at home in the lush, almost regal, gardens of The Houdini Estate in Los Angeles. The serenity of the chosen location might seem too delicate for the punk-rock raps Thug and his crew reverberate through the grounds, but as hip-hop's impactful oddball, oxymoronic magic has always been his strong suit.

Anna B Savage's new home these days is the west coast of Ireland near Mullaghmore, where this striking video was shot. Moss clings to a shoreline cove where seagulls circle in air so moist you could slice right through it.

The first time I saw shame singer Charlie Steen, he was stripped down to nothing but his Racing Green brand underwear (which he had wedged up his behind), as guitar, bass and drums punctuated his emphatic vocals. In this Tiny Desk (home) concert, we find Charlie in a full suit, tie and hat, sitting in a living room atmosphere backed not only by the rest of shame (also seated), but a compendium of violins, horns and more.

In the year-plus that we’ve been recording Tiny Desk (home) concerts, artists have worked hard to reproduce the Tiny Desk vibe through special effects ranging from Phoebe Bridgers’ Oval Office backdrop to clipping.’s tininess-enhancing miniature set. For Dinosaur Jr., the spirit of the Tiny Desk can be found in an under-appreciated facet of the series: the ever-evolving array of tchotchkes, promo pieces and other bits of pop-cultural detritus that line the shelves behind Bob Boilen’s desk.

Melbourne alt-soul collective Hiatus Kaiyote tricked out its avant-garde recording studio, The Villa, and lathered it with props: a miniature desk, alien costumes, and loads of furry friends. Frontwoman Nai Palm shared with me the impetus behind the design. "I'm a treasure hunter at heart," she said, "and the beautiful thing about dressing a set with sentimental artifacts from my house is that I feel super comfy to perform." Every intricate detail of this Tiny Desk (home) concert evokes feelings of coziness, psychedelia and joyful performance art.

Having spent time with Collections from the Whiteout, Ben Howard's sonically adventurous fourth album, I was curious to see how he would adapt these songs to the Tiny Desk (home) concert format. So when the opening shot shows Ben in a room alone, an acoustic guitar in hand, it was both an "oh yeah!" and an "uh-oh" moment. Gone were all those textures that he, Aaron Dessner, and a load of talented musicians had worked on, but front and center was that delicate, reflective voice that I love. It's a voice that, in the recent past, was often swarming in effects and buried in reverb.

Flock of Dimes may be a "solo" project for Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner, but she couldn't pass up an opportunity to invite a few friends over. You'll spot their familiar faces all over this video: Mountain Man's Amelia Randall Meath, Molly Sarlé and Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, percussionist Matthew McCaughan from Bon Iver... you even get full attendance from Sylvan Esso, given that Meath is seated alongside her partner Nick Sanborn. (He doesn't play in the set, but he did co-produce Flock of Dimes' latest album, so Wasner asked him to sit in and bring a book to read.)

Before the Isley Brothers played "That Lady" during this Tiny Desk (at Home) concert, lead singer and founding member Ronald Isley shared two stories about the song that perfectly encapsulates the scope of their nearly seven-decade career. "It reminds me of going way back, when we had Jimi Hendrix living at the house and playing. We went on to meet a young fellow by the name of Kendrick Lamar who sampled the record and we got a Grammy award for it." At the Tiny Desk, we've hosted shows from superstars and legends – but our home concert series has now officially reached new heights.

Clad in a denim jacket, Joy Oladokun shines a light on the subjects of grief, politics and life in America via the lens of someone who looks and loves differently. Standing firmly in her vulnerability, the first-generation Nigerian American opens her studio performance with "if you got a problem," a sweet ballad that pledges unconditional friendship through the lonely and the messy times. After a charming introduction, she picks up her guitar and begins "taking the heat," which she dedicates to the late Mac Miller. The song examines the way we, as consumers, treat the artists who create the music that resonates with us: "Does anybody ever wonder when the legends die young / If there's anything we could have done..."

By the time Quavo hits the second half of his opening verse on "Avalanche," all three members of Migos are vibrating with energy, falling out of their seats to ride the beat. Juvenile delight fills the air, and it feels like a competition of who can vibe the hardest. Migos performs the remainder of their Tiny Desk (home) concert — "Straightenin" and "Birthday" — with Offset leaping around the trendy streetwear spot Gallery Dept., Quavo bouncing on armchairs and Takeoff working the shoulder.

A lot has happened since we last saw Little Simz at the Tiny Desk in 2017. Her stock as an actress has risen thanks to her role on the Drake-pushed reboot of Top Boy on Netflix; her 2019 album, Grey Area, made plenty of best-of-the-year lists, and the London native received the prestigious Pioneer Award at last year's AIM Awards.

Gathered in their kitchen are sisters, Emily, Jessica, and Camilla Staveley-Taylor; best known as The Staves. “We haven’t got a tiny desk; we’ve got our kitchen table.” But where The Staves gathered, along with guitarist and tenor horn player Marcus Hamblett, is deeply embedded in their family history. “We’re coming to you from Watford, England, in the house we grew up in and the table where we wrote most of our songs around. And we would road test every song in this kitchen, so we thought we’d play some songs for you from here.”

"I like having a band," Rico Nasty says with a giggle midway through her Tiny Desk (home) concert. "Especially when it's all girls." As an artist known to mash up the genres of rap, rock and pop — and create a safe space for women to do the same — Rico has rarely gotten the chance to put this full artistic collision on display. For her Tiny Desk debut, Rico takes every opportunity to flex her rage and range.

As the camera slowly rises to the room, we see Yebba in the center of a circle, complete with band members, background singers and a string quartet. The room is part of Electric Lady Studios, where her debut album, Dawn, was recorded. The album bears the name of Yebba's mother, whom she tragically lost in 2016, and its songs find the Memphis native delving inward to process it all.

Pastor T.L. Barrett comes to this Tiny Desk (home) concert from his spiritual home, the Chicago church he has pastored for over 40 years. His choir, the Royal Voices of Life, and the band are positioned in front of a dazzlingly lit stained glass window. A tambourine is at the ready. The sight is familiar to anyone familiar with churches that anchor their neighborhood.

Flanked by an ensemble picked by music director, producer and longtime friend Denaun Porter, formidable lyricist Royce 5'9" welcomes us to Heaven, his private studio near Detroit, for an impassioned Tiny Desk (home) concert. Donned in a white jumpsuit, an amped-up Royce points with enthusiasm toward vocalist Ashley Sorrell (his mentee and an emerging talent out of The D), who launches the set with "God Speed” from Royce’s 2018 album, Book Of Ryan.

A tattooed hand scrawls on a small school desk — "Jose by J Balvin" — followed by a signature smile. It's an intimate beginning for the príncipe del reggaetón, J Balvin himself, as he begins his "El Tiny" performance on a sunny barge in the middle of the East River. Backed by the Brooklyn Bridge, Balvin breezes through some of the best cuts off of his new album JOSE (Balvin's birth name). The first three — "Vestido," "Que Locura" and "OTRO FILI" — are moody and gentle popetón, creating expectations of familiar intimacy before he blows the performance wide open with the Tainy-produced, tempo-shifting album opener, "F40." And as the sun descends on the New York skyline, Balvin closes it out with a drop-laden extended mix of the jock-jam Skrillex collaboration, "In Da Getto."

Six hands, holding pencils as drumsticks, tap out a simple percussive beat on a Wurlitzer and two desks. Zooming out, the camera reveals the members of Diamante Eléctrico, accompanied by a colorful 10-piece backing ensemble in their home country's capital, Bogotá. Diamante Eléctrico's brand of Colombian indie rock can be described in three words: funky, inventive and necessary. The Latin Grammy-winning band's music emphasizes community and place — two things that are displayed front and center as the band takes the stage in the second "El Tiny" performance of Hispanic Heritage Month.

maye's sultry vocals and ethereal energy conjure a world in which areperias shrouded in hazy bubbles and twinkly lights feels astonishingly normal.

Silvana Estrada's angelic first note strikes, and for a moment her family's instrument workshop in Veracruz, Mexico, feels like a window to the heavens themselves. Adorned in a white dress and a radiant smile, the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist invites us to participate in a rich and varied expression of familial love and musical brilliance. She wastes no time entrancing her audience, using a stripped-down performance of "Un Día Cualquiera" — accompanied by nothing but soft claps and subtle harmonies — to showcase her impeccable vocal precision and range.

As you gaze into the space where Cuban vocalist Eme Alfonso performs her Tiny Desk (home) concert, you enter a place where music becomes a spiritual language. So much of her history and music is centered around the Afro-Cuban spiritual practice that some know as santería. In the 1980s, her parents started Síntesis, a pioneering band that performed secular versions of that musical liturgy through electric jazz fusion. In fact, her parents, Carlos Alfonso and Ele Valdés, join her on vocals on this three-song set, which she recorded in Havana.

The first florid trills of piano wash in, and Sech is here to celebrate reggaetón in its home. The scene: the light-soaked Biblioteca de la Autoridad del Canal de Panamá Roberto F. Chiari. Sech arrives with a book he places on the table. His blazer bears his name, the isthmus of Panama and its flag, and the likeness of Panamanian Yankee great Mariano Rivera and his jersey number, 42 (the namesake of Sech's most recent album). He approaches the mic for a silky version of "Playa" that, like the rest of his Tiny Desk set, is nearly entirely acoustic.

After years spent working the global stage, Prince Royce returns home to claim his rightful throne in this Tiny Desk (home) concert. Performing his entire "El Tiny" set live from an unassuming barbershop chair in The Bronx, the Dominican-American superstar dazzles in this homecoming performance with the unguarded swagger characteristic of a true rey de la gente.

For a moment, it looks like YEИDRY is rising from the sea. She's barefoot and wearing yellow, like the roses on her side table tiny desk, Oshún's color. On the floor, below the seaside view, is a box of records displaying Celia & Johnny, the 1974 classic collaboration between Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco. To her right sits the 1979 album Cross Over by the Fania All Stars, of which Celia and Johnny were both starring members. From Soho Beach House in Miami, YEИDRY performs five songs, which make up most of her solo discography.

Sitting next to rapper Nicki Nicole, on a stack of books, you'll see an old Sony camcorder – throughout this six-song performance we cut back to its footage every now and again, the rough texture breaking from the pristine, offering a nostalgic sense of intimacy. It's a production choice that completely works and, in a way, reflects Nicki Nicole at large, as an artist born in 2000 and with a connection to sounds and styles beyond her years.

To the beat of her swishing hips and swaying percussionists, Camila Cabello's famous "Half of my heart is in Havana" reverberates across this musician-packed Miami set, with an at-home ease that feels novel for the global popstar.

Gathered at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, a hallowed space for Black American music, Cha Wa's set begins with hand-clapped rhythms and light percussion – then, a burst of horns gives way to "My People," a song that zeroes in on the disparities between the haves and the have-nots: "Rich people living in paradise Poor people under the bridge at night, oh yeah Most people know what it takes to survive But my people know how to do it and thrive." Cha Wa celebrates Black culture through the medium of rhythm, while also punctuating cultural differences with the hope of opening up the eyes and ears of those ignorant of, or ignoring, those differences. Decked out in a brilliant green feathered "Indian suit," Joseph Boudreaux Jr. celebrates the roots of Mardi Gras Indian culture.

Yasmin Williams doesn't need much scenery to set your imagination in motion. For her Tiny Desk (home) concert, the Virginia-based guitarist keeps the background sparse (a rug, a folding table, curtains, a plank of wood) to foreground her inventive playing.

Jagged Little Pill, the Broadway musical based on Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album of the same name, reopens Thursday night after a 19-month hiatus due to COVID. The cast assembled at the D’Angelico Guitars showroom in Manhattan to record this Tiny Desk (home) concert, finally able to celebrate their long-awaited return to the stage.

Haley Fohr's voice is built for cathedrals, but we'll take a funeral chapel. In Circuit des Yeux's Tiny Desk (home) concert — recorded amid the sepia-toned stained glass of the historic May Chapel at the Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum — Fohr's operatic, four-octave vibrato contains a wondrous terror, but also an illumination of being.

Decked in a hoodie, cargo pants and coveted sneakers, a slimmed-down and clean-shaven Ed Sheeran stands surrounded by bookshelves and a host of world-class musicians. He’s flanked by music director to the stars, Adam Blackstone, who assembled the band and handled bass guitar duties. After opening this Tiny Desk (home) concert with his latest single, “Shivers,” Sheeran introduces himself and proceeds with more hits, new tunes, and a surprise throwback.

It felt good to be home, if only for one night: home, in this case, being my Tiny Desk at NPR. We were about to film Neffy, our 2021 Tiny Desk Contest winner, at my desk at NPR headquarters. My corner of the NPR Music department looked just as I had left it almost 600 days ago; it's eerie inside and nearly nightfall outside. There's no audience for this Sunday evening concert, just our five-person Tiny Desk crew. We had filmed almost 1,000 Tiny Desk concerts before we abandoned the office in mid-March of 2020. What was then exciting yet routine now felt somewhat like a hallucination. For Neffy, it too was a dream: — a dream come true. Her joy during the recording was contagious. Neffy is Mecca Russell, a young singer who grew up around Arlington, Va., just across the river from NPR. Her Contest-winning song "Wait Up" is about living in New York, most recently during the COVID-19 outbreak, but yearning for home.

In their Tiny Desk (home) concert, The War On Drugs gather in their packed studio in Burbank, CA to let us in on the fun and intricate inner workings of their craft. After opening the show with “I Don’t Live Here Anymore,” which shares the same title as their new album, frontman Adam Granduciel introduces the band and asks if anybody has a capo. Suddenly a very thoughtfully crafted tiny desk with drumsticks for legs (and topped with a tiny lamp too!) slowly lowers down into the space, delivering said capo. Granduciel smiles, and the group continues with three more tracks from the new record: “I Don’t Wanna Wait,” “Old Skin,” and “Change.”

Every inch of Joss Favela’s Sinaloa-based, sombrero-shrouded “El Tiny” concert invokes the musical lineage of Mexican Regional music. Mixing soulful vocals with twangy guitars and a classic accordion, he opens with a sweet rendition of a genre staple, love ballad “Pienso en Tí.” Next, he dips into a heartfelt, piano-driven version of a song he wrote for his sister “La Mejor Versión de Mi.” Taking a beat between the tracks, he invites us to partake in the legacy of generations of caballeros that preceded him. “Yo soy de un rancho que se llama Caitime, Sinaloa, Mexico y con esta música crecimos,” he says, “esta música vivimos, y nos gusta porque son nuestras raíces, nuestra cultura, nuestra gente. (I’m from a ranch town called Caitime, Sinaloa, Mexico and we grew up with this music, we live this music and we like it because it’s our roots, our culture, our people.)”

From an elegant performance space in Lagos, Nigeria, Temilade Openiyi, aka Tems, adorns hues that recall the title of her latest EP, If Orange Was a Place. As she slips into performance mode, emoting with her eyelids drooped slightly, she begins "Found" in her upper register before switching to that unmistakably rich alto range. That's when the magic starts.

Seated in the comfort of his home in Winnipeg, singing his song "Lighthouse," William Prince emanates thoughtful messages of redemption and love. "I greet you today from Treaty 1 Territory, Winnipeg, Manitoba," he says. "What a time it's been, I've been at home writing songs this past little while, and it really gave me some perspective on something ... confirmed something for me. You don't want to let a day go wasted." And with that, William Prince's baritone lulls us into his song "Wasted," a song he wrote to his son but is full of advice for us all.

"It's Indigenous Peoples' Month every month, don't you forget, mark your calendars," says Nicholas Galanin. "I think it's important right now that we uplift and acknowledge Indigenous people beyond holidays or months, allocated time." Galanin, who's Tlingit and Unangax̂, leads Ya Tseen and brings his perspective as an Indigenous artist to every aspect of the band's music and artistry. Even the backdrop of their Tiny Desk (home) concert is a house screen — the largest of its kind in Southeast Alaska — carved by Will Burkhart and Galanin (as an apprentice). The video itself was filmed at the Sheet'ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi community house, which is modeled after customary Tlingit Long Houses.

For Native American Heritage Month, we wanted to feature Indigenous musicians that break out of the preconceptions that many have of Indigenous music. Raye Zaragoza does just that, planting herself firmly in the folk genre, a tradition often reduced to white musicians with acoustic guitars. She pushes back on the narrative of folk music being for a certain type of person in her song “They Say,” in which she sings specifically about a time she realized at one of her own concerts that she probably couldn’t have afforded to be a member of the audience. “They say that folk music’s for the elite,” she sings, “the wise and the old with a college degree.”

Company finally is back on Broadway this week after a 20-month hiatus. There were only nine preview performances before all the theaters in New York went dark during the pandemic. Now the cast celebrates its return with a Tiny Desk performance filmed a few blocks away from the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre at the CIVILIAN Hotel. It's the 35th birthday celebration for the lead character, Bobbie, but also a reunion for this ensemble.

Sloppy Jane seems to be as much an event as it is a band. And despite 11 instruments — including cello, two violins, viola, two guitars, drums, bass, and a trumpet — crammed into a coffee shop called Porcelain in the Ridgewood neighborhood of Queens, that only represents around half of the musicians on Sloppy Jane's new album. Oh, and I do need to mention that the album, Madison, was recorded with more than 20 people, plus a film crew, in the belly of Lost World Caverns, where they lowered an upright piano into the cave! So, it's safe to say there's nothing casual about the music Haley Dahl, aka Sloppy Jane, makes, and the commitment from her accompanying musicians helps bring these crazy ideas to life.

No other band has brought me more joy in 2021 than Wet Leg, and I truly needed joy in 2021. When "Chaise Longue," came out in June, it felt like a gift. It's rare to hear a band's very first song sound as perfect as this one did, but that's part of the magic that Wet Leg exudes. Two dear friends – Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers — making music to make each other smile, then watching that smile spread as audiences catch on.

Stepping into a DMV when you're about to take your first driver's test, while nerve wracking, is something of a milestone. And Olivia Rodrigo has been hitting milestones with frequency this year: her first album SOUR debuted at the top of the charts in May after the success of three previously released singles, most notably the viral "drivers license" (hence the DMV locale and its "interesting vibes.") Her pop stardom may seem sudden, but Rodrigo has been entranced by music and songwriting for the majority of her 18 years, as if she's been observing the right moves from the backseat of the car until it was time for her to get behind the wheel.

If you've been feeling a little overwhelmed with the world lately, you're not alone. Arooj Aftab is right there with you. The Brooklyn-based Pakistani musician transforms her worries into tranquil music. "The way things have been unfolding, it's just madness," she told NPR recently. The songs she offers here, at a decrepit, yet generously resonant convent in Brooklyn, sound like an antidote for stressful times. Aftab's melodies float delicately and meander amid a chamber ensemble that includes Celtic harpist Maeve Gilchrist, classical guitarist Gyan Riley (yes, Terry Riley's son), violinist Darian Donovan Thomas and Shahzad Ismaily on bass and synth. And then there's Aftab's voice, smoky yet smooth, caressing words in the Urdu language.

Beneath Mick Jenkins' smooth veneer lies a smoldering intensity. It comes across in subtle fashion, as he stays seated, cool and collected for the duration of his Tiny Desk (home) concert shot in Los Angeles. But like the embers glowing in the adjacent fireplace, you can feel the heat emanating from this brother's soul.

What a remarkable sight to see the reunion of Robert Plant and Alison Krauss gathered around a couple of microphones in Nashville. It's been 14 years since their surprising and remarkable album Raising Sand and now they're back at Sound Emporium, the studio where they recorded some of that first record and the entirety of their new album Raise The Roof. Huddled in the control room are an all-star cast of musicians, with Jay Bellerose on drums, JD McPherson on guitar, Dennis Crouch on upright bass, Stuart Duncan on guitars and ukulele, and Viktor Krauss on electric bass and guitar. All of these folks minus JD McPherson played on the original recordings of the songs you'll hear in this Tiny Desk (home) concert.

From Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen in Inglewood, California, our second and final Insecure Tiny Desk takeover is a total Los Angeles affair. The spot where B.K. Habermehl, Nnena, and TeaMarrr gather is also co-owned by series creator and star, Issa Rae. Our first collaboration with Insecure was an experiment just a few weeks into the Tiny Desk (home) experiment last year. We took what we learned and decided to run it back. Hilltop was featured on the show and the addition of L.A.'s own 1500 or Nothin' as the backing band made the refinement complete.

An unapologetic expression of faith and gratefulness is paired with festive lighting, poinsettias and ornaments in this holiday Tiny Desk (home) concert from Jonathan McReynolds and Mali Music. Both musicians are prominent in the latest generation of contemporary gospel and inspirational artists, incorporating secular sounds and outreach as an entry point into the "good news" of gospel music. They each follow in the footsteps of Kirk Franklin (and of Edwin and Walter Hawkins before him). Individually, McReynolds and Mali Music's output showcases a marriage of motivating messages and faith, with music that younger audiences are more attuned to. The duo came together last year to release "Movin' On," which yielded "good news" of its own in the form of a Grammy award, followed by a nomination this year for their EP Jonny x Mali: Live in LA. Given how effortlessly they trade-off during this Tiny Desk performance, I can see a Christmas album in their future.