Tiny Desk Concerts - Video

On a particularly muggy day this past week, Mali Music arrived at NPR's D.C. headquarters armed with only his enthusiasm (and a teensy entourage). Though the humid haze and some midday I-need-a-coffee-stat office funk hung all around him, he soldiered his way through. Throughout his new album, Mali Is..., the singer-songwriter and musician showcases his unabashed positivity and the sort of uplifting spirit that can faithfully be found ringing through choirs down South; as a boy, Mali Music was raised in the church in Savannah, Ga. But when compared to his previous albums — The Coming and The 2econd Coming — the new record avoids the direct, at times repentant, language of traditional gospel music. He says he's using his new perspective to serve a higher purpose, to make a difference. That message travels a bit further when it aligns with the sounds and words of the mainstream; these tools are necessary for adjusting to the secular world. In this session, you'll see Mali Music hop from in front of a microphone, backed by booming production streaming from his DJ's laptop, to an intimate cuddle with an acoustic guitar, and finish in a relaxed position behind a keyboard for a touching performance of the album's lead single, "Beautiful." With every song — and between the tracks, with motivational messages strung throughout — he demonstrates his readiness and capability to take on the industry, as he charges forward with an electrifying message of hope.

Rodney Crowell performs with the ease and swagger of a man comfortable in his ways. He carries his songs the way he carries his old guitar: out in the open, no case, almost as an extension of his body. The man from Crosby, Texas, has been writing country songs for much of his life. At 22, he moved to Nashville and honed his craft with country greats Jerry Reed and Guy Clark. Emmylou Harriswould record his song "Till I Gain Control Again," and these days — 40 years later — Crowell is a legend whose songs have been recorded by Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Rosanne Cash and the Oak Ridge Boys, among others. Crowell's commercial success in the late '80s was huge, and in 2003 he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Now, he's just released his 14th solo album, Tarpaper Kid, and it's filled with poignant autobiographical songs, marked by brilliant turns of phrase and thoughtful observations. Here, he performs three of its songs, with the aid of backup singers Donivan Cowart and Joanne Gardner.  

Marian McLaughlin is a unique musician based in the Washington/Baltimore area, and because she's lived in D.C., I've had a chance to watch her grow. She's an artist on her own path, making music like few others. The closest comparisons might be Joanna Newsom or Diane Cluck, both of whom I admire; both are of their own place and time, and the music they make connects on a personal level. Listening feels as if you've entered their meticulously decorated living rooms. And so it is for Marian McLaughlin, with her quirky and wistful style of singing — and her unusual nylon-string guitar playing, which balances staccato and spacious sounds. When I saw McLaughlin perform with a string quartet, I felt compelled to bring her to the Tiny Desk. Ethan Foote, the fellow on the upright bass, did the arrangements; Geoff Manyin is on cello and Nick Montopoli, on violin, is from the group Invoke. The strings add considerable atmosphere to McLaughlin's music; you can hear it especially in the opening song about Otto Lilienthal, a German mechanical engineer who was a precursor to the Wright Brothers. These three songs are from McLaughlin's self-released record on Bandcamp, titled "Dérive."

Almost any pianist, from a budding beginner to a pro like Simone Dinnerstein, will tell you that one of the basic techniques of keyboard playing is also the toughest to master: making your hands to do separate things simultaneously. The great Johann Sebastian Bach knew this to be true. That's the primary reason he composed his Two-Part Inventions. On one hand (pardon the metaphor) they are rigorous exercises he wrote in the 1720s for the musical education of his children and students. On the other hand, as Dinnerstein told the audience at this Tiny Desk Concert, they are "an endless well of musical knowledge and imagination." Some of the Inventions zing with the speed of a sewing machine. Others dance and some unfold like a gentle aria. Dinnerstein learned a number of Bach's Two-Part Inventions as a youngster. Later she used them to teach her own students how to divide their brains. And now, as an adult musician with a major career, she has returned to these deceptively simple pieces, finding their complexity especially satisfying. She also likes the way the inventions force the player to make the piano sing. That's not easy when you consider the piano is actually a percussion instrument of wires and hammers concealed inside a box. Bach himself noted that they are good not only for playing "neatly in two parts" but also "to achieve a cantabile style of playing." That's musical jargon for playing the music in a singable style. And oh how poetically Ms. Dinnerstein makes our Tiny Desk piano sing.

No one else makes music that sounds like this. Juana Molina takes familiar elements — guitars, drums, keyboards, voice — and manipulates them into bewildering, attractive, polished jewels. Her songs don't fall into beat patterns we're used to, but we can dance to them. The guitar doesn't make sounds you'd expect, but we can relate to them. It's as if she'd been raised by wolves and discovered the world of music on her own. The truth, however, is that Juana Molina is a creative soul. A comedian in her home of Buenos Aires, she found success in that field before giving it all up for music at age 23. Now 51, with six imaginative records in her catalog, Molina brings her small band to share some magic at the Tiny Desk. This is one of the most enchanting 15 minutes of music I've heard all year.  

Andrew Hozier-Byrne's voice is so rich, so vital and so soulful, I'm certain I'll follow his music for a long time to come. The 24-year-old Irishman, who performs under the name Hozier, opens this set with the brilliant and instantly grabby song "Take Me to Church," about passion, sex and religion. Hozier's music is based in the blues, and you'll hear the singer-guitarist's love for Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker during the second song he performs here. His band — piano, guitar, percussion — steps aside for the swampy "To Be Alone," in which the blues provide a starting place for his high, yearning vocals and deep questioning. Hozier has just two EPs out, and both have me yearning to hear more.

Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan is one of the most groundbreaking musicians in the Middle East — thanks in part to her work in the electronic indie band Soapkills — though she's now based in Paris. Also an actress in Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, Hamdan possesses an allure unlike any performer I've seen, and it comes through clearly in this Tiny Desk Concert. Her singing is both casual and provocative, framed by provocative and commanding movements. These three songs are stripped-down versions of pieces from Hamdan's current album, Ya Nass. Amazingly, these hypnotic arrangements came together mere moments before her Tiny Desk Concert. Hamdan had only just met Gabriel Gordon when they traveled down together from New York that morning. They're unrehearsed, and yet locked into a sound that's calm, cool and universal.  

Everyone knows there are five immutable truths in life. No. 1 is "Nothing's ever easy." No. 2 is "Nobody does the right thing." No. 3 is, well, you get the idea. The Portland, Ore., band Ages and Ages will likely make you rethink these immutable truths — particularly the whole idea about doing the right thing in life. Pay close attention to the second song the group performs in this uplifting Tiny Desk Concert, and you'll see what I mean. The eight young men and women who make up Ages and Ages shower audiences with pure joy. The songs are unabashedly inspirational, thoughtful and crazy-catchy, in ways that make it hard to listen without feeling better about the state of the world. The recipe: Take a liberal amount of group sing-alongs, stir in some hand-clapping, and add a few ecstatic shouts to the heavens. Ages and Ages is touring in support of its triumphant second album,Divisionary. The group stopped by the Tiny Desk earlier this spring to perform four songs: "No Nostalgia," the infectious opener to the band's 2011 debut Alright You Restless, as well as "Divisionary," "Light Goes Out" and "Our Demons" from the new record.  

The Bee Gees did it. So do Smokey Robinson, Prince and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. They all sing in the high register usually associated with female singers. Men have cultivated their upper range in falsetto for centuries. They're called countertenors — at least in the classical world — and today we find ourselves in a golden age of such singers, thanks in part to continued interest in early music. One of the best of today's crop of countertenors is Iestyn Davies (pronounced YES-tin DAY-vis). Lately, he's been exploring the meticulously crafted, melancholy songs of Elizabethan composerJohn Dowland. Joining Davies is lutenist Thomas Dunford, who has been affectionately dubbed "the Eric Clapton of the lute" by the BBC. Dowland was a master of melancholy, a condition viewed differently in Elizabethan England than it is today. You might say that, back then, it was almost hip to have the blues, and Dowland instinctively knew how to tap into feelings of rejection, regret and general malaise in his music. (Dowland himself seemed to nurse a lifelong disappointment in never landing a job with Queen Elizabeth.) Yet not every Dowland song is a downer. The opening number, "Come again, sweet love doth now invite," finds the protagonist relishing the taste of love he's had, wondering if it will ever return. When he weeps over his bad dreams, Davies, an expressive singer with a sweet timbre and a keen ear for drama in the text, shades the music by lightening his tone to sound more vulnerable. We can't forget the lute in this partnership; it's crucial and shouldn't be viewed as mere accompaniment. Listen for the delicacy in the colors and lines Dowland builds in the lute's part, as if the instrument itself were singing a duet with the voice.  

For a brief moment, I imagined hearing Chvrches perform "Recover" or "Gun" with a couple of acoustic guitars and perhaps a shaker or two. And, though these songs would surely stand up well when broken down and bared, I'm thrilled that Chvrches came with a small arsenal of synthesizers to perform a few highlights from last year's album The Bones of What You Believe. Seeing these now-familiar earworms executed up close was nearly as much a campfire moment as an acoustic set might have been, except the flames burned brighter. Lauren Mayberry's voice felt powerful and vulnerable, while Iain Cook and Martin Doherty kept those memorable synth lines bubbling underneath. The result works as a perfect introduction to the Glasgow trio, but also a reaffirmation of talent and longevity for those already love with the band.  

The music of Canada's Timber Timbre is often strange and unsettling. The band, led by Taylor Kirk — a crooner with a deceptively sweet voice — makes spare, evenly paced songs that sound like late-night echoes from a swampy woods. It's the kind of music you'd expect to hear in a David Lynch movie, or in HBO's deeply disturbing series True Detective: dark and unnerving, yet oddly seductive. It's an eerie, mysterious vibe that's nearly impossible to re-create while playing live in someone's office at 2 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon. But that's just what Timber Timbre does for a captivated crowd in this Tiny Desk performance. Taylor Kirk is a man of few words. For this performance, he lets the music do all the talking as the quartet eases its way through three songs from the band's latest album, the smoldering Hot Dreams. The set includes the title track, the truly creepy "Run From Me" ("Run from me, darlin', you better run for your life"), and "Grand Canyon."  

These guys don't speak or sing a word, but each song sends a clear message. Public Service Broadcasting is a duo featuring the nerdy J. Willgoose, Esq. on guitar, banjo and electronics and Wrigglesworth on drums. The source material for the music is British public-service films from roughly the 1940s through the 1960s. The band projects carefully crafted films from those public-service messages that sync to the music, liberally using footage and voices from the past as a way of looking at the present. Public Service Broadcasting puts it all together in a powerful way — it's sometimes melancholy but mostly good fun. It's entertainment as education for the head and feet alike. In this Tiny Desk Concert, we project a few of those films in the bright daylight of our office. It frankly works better in a dark club, but the music made in this small setting remains huge and powerful.

Cian Nugent doesn't know what he wants to be, and that's OK. The Dublin-based guitarist cut his teeth as a 19-year-old pickin' on the acoustic worlds that John Fahey, Jack Rose and Bert Jansch built. But that was five years ago, and since then, Nugent has come at his instrument and his songwriting from all sides, hitting up psychedelic folk, garage pop and cosmic guitar improvisation along the way. On a short U.S. tour supporting Angel Olsen (herself a Tiny Desk alum), Nugent stopped by the NPR Music offices to play what he's called the "incoherent range of the mess that is my musical career." There's the acoustic "Grass Above My Head," a slow, somber melody that turns into a ragtime jaunt. The song once shared a 7" with an inventive Black Flag cover and was re-recorded with his band The Cosmos for last year's excellent Born With the Caul. Nugent then switches to a cheap, no-name electric guitar — purchased just days before in a pawn shop — that only seems to stay in tune when a pencil's been in the nut. (Oh, yes, there's a story about said pencil.) It gives "Hire Purchase" the just-barely-off quality required for the raunchy, basement-bar choogle going down — like maybe J.J. Cale is still drunk from yesterday's gig and the only cure is more pencil! And, in defiance of all daylight, Nugent closes with "Nightlife," which, at the time of the Tiny Desk filming, was still untitled. True to its title, it's the sad-sack set closer sure to be played at last call — heads on the bar, mops out on a beer-soaked floor, with Nugent singing about regret and "wasted time."

Once you're able to see this three-song set by the band Johnnyswim, NPR Music will have published exactly 350 Tiny Desk Concerts — so we've developed a pretty good sense of when a set will stick in our memories for a while. We intuited, for example, that Adele was about to become a dominant force shortly after she breezed into our offices. (Okay, that didn't exactly require psychic powers, but still.) In the case of Johnnyswim, the prevailing sense boiled down to, "Boy, we haven't heard the last of them." Impossibly telegenic and charming, husband and wife Abner Ramirez and Amanda Sudano — who formed their band in Nashville before relocating to L.A. — have the booming voices of great street buskers, but also the polished sparkle of natural-born stage performers. Sudano is the daughter of the late Donna Summer, with whom she used to sing backup, but Johnnyswim's story isn't one of nepotism or overnight success; the two have been at this together for nearly a decade, and they've got the grandiose impeccability to prove it. In this set, the lovely ballad "Falling for Me" is bookended by songs that could be airdropped onto half the shows on television; if you're hearing them here for the first time, don't be surprised if it's your first exposure of many. Johnnyswim opens this session with "Home" — a sweet rouser that could easily follow in the footsteps of other recent hits with that title — and closes it with a full-band reading of what promises to be its signature song, the title track from the new Diamonds. As Sudano notes here, the song has morphed into "an anthem to ourselves to keep ourselves encouraged." For Johnnyswim, such pep talks won't likely be necessary for long.

It's right there in the band's name, but the music of Quilt is truly a tapestry. Its songs are made of small bits of verses and choruses that, heard individually, may not seem to fit. But in the hands and voices of this band, they stitch together beautifully. Interweaving harmonies and guitar lines from Anna Fox Rochinski and Shane Butler set the tone for these tunes — soft and benevolent, dreamy and quivering, with poetry that's thoughtful and playful. The opening song at this Tiny Desk Concert, "Arctic Shark," questions and enchants. How can I proceed with thee? This eastern harbor's full of grief All my heavy dreams are simply a luxury Horses in the pepper tree and the lighthouse floating in the sea Quilt has become a favorite live band of mine, and its album Held in Splendor often finds its way into my late-night listening. Comforting and warm, the Boston band's music always has me feeling right at home.