Bob Boilen

On this week's All Songs Considered, hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton share songs from a trio of bands on the verge of releasing breakthrough albums. Bob starts the show strong with a jaw-dropping new song from Car Seat Headrest called "Vincent," which we also featured as a ...

Thousands of bands have made strong debuts, and many of those have made good second and third records — it's harder, but not unusual. It's truly rare to make your 10th album exciting and relevant more than 20 years on. For all that, I'd say Wilco is an American ...

You're about to listen to a song from what is likely to be my No. 1 album of 2016. I haven't felt this way about a guitar-based rock record since I heard Courtney Barnett's debut last year.

Teens of Denial, by Car Seat Headrest, is a brilliant set ...

Martin Atkins knows many of the secrets of life, especially band life. He's played in Public Image Ltd, Nine Inch Nails, Pigface, Killing Joke and more. These days, after a life of touring nightmares and general music business foolery, he writes and teaches about music in Chicago and ...

It's been a good year.

I'm about to have my first book published. I'm making an album with my band Danger Painters. I have a great job, a music show I love and a concert series at my desk. I directed All ...

There is new music from Quilt and that makes me happy. The band's third album, which is out next week on Feb. 26, is called Plaza, and its winsome, wandering electric folk thrills my late-1960s soul. The songs on Plaza, a combination of brand new material and newly invigorated older ...

There's a pervasive sadness to Mothers' songs that's strangely disturbing: When Kristine Leschper sings, "We lived unloved in unmade beds / You wore me like a necklace," it's hard not to want to reach out and lend her hope. When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired is filled ...

Watching Ben Folds perform his songs on piano at the Tiny Desk, there seems to be a direct line between thought and expression, except perhaps when he stumbles or forgets a line or two. Folds has a knack for plainspoken, smartly crafted words that sometimes sting and always seem ...

On this week's All Songs Considered, hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton play songs that volley between soft, sentimental pop and more abrasive rock, including The Black Ryder's show-stopping cover of George Harrison's "Isn't It A Pity," My bubba's simple, stunning vocals and the ...

From the moment I heard this new Big Ups song, "National Parks," with lyrics, "I think I saw her say to herself / This is everything I've missed," I wanted to know who she was. Then I saw this video, in which the central figure is a woman whose life ...

On this week's All Songs, Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton share songs of power, protest and passion, including a cut from Shearwater's "angriest" record to date, the urgent rock of the Ukrainian band Phooey! and singer Kevin Morby's fervent if exasperated attempt to make sense of ...

For a singer who's sought privacy in the parking lot of a Target so he could record vocals in the backseat of his car, Will Toledo hasn't been shy about sharing his work. By age 23, he'd already released a dozen albums. Toledo, who records under the name Car ...

"These are just the strongest melodies and the strongest ideas that occurred to me over a three to four year period, distilled."

That's the great violinist, lyricist and singer Andrew Bird on the subject of a project he's excited though a bit apprehensive talking about, his new album Are You ...

Just before The Suffers' members begin performing, you'll see 20 arms stretched in the air Superman-style, followed by 10 voices. The first counts off, 1 to 10, then shouts long and hard at full lung capacity. That's just the warmup.

What you get from this Houston band is soul, straight ...

On this week's All Songs Considered, we've got several new favorites including Bob Boilen's No. 1 discovery of 2016 so far, Lucy Dacus. Robin Hilton shares songs by several artists he thinks are about to release their best albums yet, including Santigold and Ane ...

It's fun to see something truly new from someone whose work you love. Matt Berninger came to the Tiny Desk as lead singer of The National a few years ago, but this time he's collaborating with Brent Knopf from the bands Menomena and Ramona Falls. EL VY is ...

The perfect music video makes me fall in love with a song by breathing life into its story. Here is a perfect music video. The band is Parlour Tricks, a band in love with radio pop, something I don't always embrace, but that's where the video worked it's magic. I ...

On Sunday, Jan. 17, globalFEST, one of America's premiere showcases of musical talent from around the world, once again took over the three stages at Manhattan's Webster Hall. The one-evening festival has few American rivals in the way it simultaneously expands and condenses musical perspectives. The performances here move naturally ...

Today, we celebrate the release of our 500th Tiny Desk concert. It's amazing that something that started as a bit of a wisecrack has been so widely embraced by artists and fans. In 2008 at SXSW in Austin, NPR Music's Stephen Thompson and I met up to see singer

Sometime between today and tomorrow, more than 67 million Americans in 19 states are facing blizzard or winter storm warnings. So we at the Tiny Desk had an idea.

We're two weeks into the 2016 Tiny Desk Contest. We're looking for the next great undiscovered musician to come ...