- This week on New Music Friday from All Songs Considered: a deeply pensive new album from R&B singer Brent Faiyaz, a stirring release from rock band Metric, a meditative instrumental record from producer Apollo Brown and more great new albums out July 8.
- I first fell for the music of Abby Hwong, who performs as NoSo, when they entered the 2019 Tiny Desk Contest with a song that showed off their impressive guitar skills. This week, the Los Angeles songwriter released their compelling debut record, Stay Proud of Me. Hwong spoke to my colleague Elle Mannion about learning to be vulnerable in their songwriting and how their music has been a place to process their evolving relationship with their nonbinary gender identity.
- Laura Veirs’ new record, Found Light, is her first release written since she divorced her longtime partner and musical producer, Tucker Martine. It’s a beautiful album with a “hyper-alert, naturalistic sensuality,” says writer Laura Snapes, one that surveys “the balance between the bitter weight of experience and the rewards that might come from remaining attuned to wonder.”
- Colombia’s Andean music is going through a renaissance. Played on three string instruments, this music was the country's soundtrack from the turn of the 20th century to the 1940s. By elegantly folding in influences like Led Zeppelin and Queen, the band Itinerante has quickly moved towards the center stage of this burgeoning scene. According to Paulo Sánchez, director of the Bogotá venue Teatro Colsubsidio, the group is “bringing back the trio format to a superlative level.”
- July 5, 1997, was the opening night of the groundbreaking all-women music festival Lilith Fair. Sarah McLachlan, who founded the festival, described Lilith Fair’s goals this way: “to create an environment where everybody gets to be seen and heard and valued.” Twenty-five years after the festival’s debut, musicians who participated in Lilith Fair and journalists who covered it reflected on the festival's importance in interviews with Morning Edition.
- This week, our friends at member station KAFM shared a video of a live performance by reggae musician Mighty Mystic.
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Now that Tiny Desk concerts are once again happening behind Bob Boilen’s actual desk in NPR’s headquarters, Bob says he’s excited to get to “witness that nervous energy surrounding most artists who are about to perform in an office, in daylight, with fans just a few feet away.” That was certainly true of Belle and Sebastian, who — despite the challenges the setting presents — managed to fit its eight members behind the Desk to put on a charming and magnificent performance.
Also this week: the first digital avatar to ever perform a Tiny Desk (home) concert came courtesy of musician Maylee Todd; we also shared a performance from multi-instrumentalist FKJ, which my colleague Nisha Venkat says feels like witnessing “a game of musical Tetris.” |
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| Orville Peck talks cowboy culture. |
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| Listen to your local NPR station. |
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