Bob Boilen

The National Parks is a band from Utah, but place was so important to this song that they had a crew shoot this film in Finland to capture just the right feel. There's a tension in that opening guitar line that adds a bit of mystery to the ...

I came to know Daniel Lanois through his instrumental collaboration with Brian Eno, Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks, in 1983. I fell in love with Lanois' own music through his singing and the heartfelt, textured songs on albums like 1989's lovely Acadie (with its New Orleans flavor) and 1993's ...

One of the greatest, biggest, most enjoyable brass bands has just made its best studio recording. Red Baraat is a beat- and brass-driven affair, with a double-headed Indian drum as its timekeeper and rhythm maker. Sunny Jain plays the dhol, and on Gaadi Of Truth he feeds those rhythms ...

I go to so many shows, and for years I've been taking photos with my phone and posting them on my Instagram account @tinydesk. But a few months into 2014 I bought one of those tiny little mirrorless cameras by Sony. Then I caught the photo ...

I missed another year of TV shows. I missed every single Netflix and HBO series. I did, however, see four times as many movies in 2014 as I did in 2013: four, instead of just one. What I did see once again was a whole lot of live music, 662 ...

Old stock film footage from the 1920s Saskatchewan Agricultural Archives is an odd but mysteriously perfect backdrop for this spare and pining tune from Canadian Andy Shauf. The piano-based song is a preview of his album The Bearer of Bad News, which comes out on Feb. 3.

In case you missed it, we took a rocket ride to outer space for the holidays. But this week we re-dock at the mother ship Earth to ring in the new year toting a new mix that includes premieres from The Go! Team and

The Phish star was in town to put on a huge show, but the songs here feel more personal than that. Watch Anastasio perform "Sleep Again," "Summer of '89" and "Backwards Down the Number Line."

Hear an interview with Mitchell Kezin, a Christmas music "crate-digger," searching far and wide for rare holiday music of years past, along with a playlist featuring lesser-known Christmas gems.

In 2012 we — Bob and Robin, your two intrepid All Songs Considered hosts — celebrated the season by renting a cabin in a snowy woods for a holiday party that nobody came to. Last year we took a road trip to the nation's heartland to discover the ...

She came to the Tiny Desk a little unsure, and left singing "West Memphis" with intensity and passion. Lucinda Williams has a voice like no other, and it shines in these intimate moments.

Williams is on a roll with a new double album, Down Where The Spirit Meets The ...

We love hearing what our listeners think are the best albums of the year. It's a fun way to see how our own picks line up with our audience's, and a chance to discover some surprises we may have missed. (There are always surprises we missed.)

For 2014, our listeners ...

This was Future Islands' year. After touring hard for eight years and recording four albums, they finally broke through. The latest album, Singles, came out in March. It is a well-loved and grand look at the dramatic and synthy side of this Baltimore band, though it may have ...

Pakistan is picking up the pieces today after an attack on a school by Taliban militants left 145 people dead.

It's a heart-wrenching story. We've collected the news in a different post. Here, we'll tell the story visually, but fair warning — the photographs are representative of the horrific ...

This year, my favorites were quieter than usual. My top three albums have acoustic guitars often as the lead instrument, though the artists — Luluc, Angel Olsen and Rodrigo Amarante — originate from Australia, the U.S. and Brazil, respectively.

Six of my top 10 are led by ...

In the summer of 1971, I was a camp counselor at a sleep-away camp for a bunch of 5- to 7-year-olds. For those eight weeks, I walked home with about $50. I bought a guitar and began to learn the songs I'd come to love from the recently released Tea ...

UPDATE: This video is no longer available here.

Tomorrow, as a companion to U2's album Songs of Innocence, the band is releasing Films of Innocence, one video for each song on the album. But today we've got an early preview of the video for "Song for Someone," ...

Close your eyes and listen, and you might imagine someone who looks a bit like Otis Redding. Open them, and you're likely to see someone who looks more like your neighborhood bank teller.

That man standing on my desk in the golden shoes is Paul Janeway. He was, in fact, ...

Want to play a Tiny Desk Concert? Now's your chance: NPR Music and Lagunitas are holding a contest, and the winner gets to perform at my desk here at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.

To enter, make a video of you performing one original song behind a desk ...

Sam Amidon takes traditional music and makes it his own. He might begin with a traditional murder ballad and then morph it into something of his own, fueled by Bill Frisell's languidly atmospheric guitar, Shahzad Ismaily's minimal but essential percussion and Amidon's own yearning voice. At other times, ...