Tiny Desk Concerts - Video

The Tiny Desk has moved, and OK Go has helped make it so. Earlier this year, we needed to figure out the best possible way to move my Tiny Desk from NPR's old headquarters to our new facility just north of the U.S. Capitol. We wanted to go out with a bang and arrive at our new space in style, so our thoughts naturally turned to a catchy pop band we love: OK Go, whose unforgettable videos have been viewed tens of millions of times on YouTube. Bandleader Damian Kulash used to be an engineer at an NPR member station in Chicago, so we figured he'd be up for helping us execute a simple idea: Have OK Go start performing a Tiny Desk Concert at our old location, continue playing the same song while the furniture and shelving is loaded onto a truck, and finish the performance at our new home. In addition to cameos by many of our NPR colleagues — Ari Shapiro, Audie Cornish, David Greene, Guy Raz, Scott Simon, Alix Spiegel, Susan Stamberg and more — this required a few ingredients: Number of video takes: 223 Percent used in final version: 50 Number of raw audio channels: 2,007 Percent used in final version: 50 Number of microphones: 5 Number of hard-boiled eggs consumed: 8, mostly by bassist Tim Nordwind Number of seconds Carl Kasell spent in the elevator with OK Go: 98 Number of times Ari Shapiro played the tubular bells: 15 Number of pounds the tubular bells weighed: 300 Number of times the shelves were taken down and put back up: 6 Number of days it took to shoot: 2 Number of cameras: 1 OK Go played "All Is Not Lost" from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, with words tweaked by the All Songs Considered team. And so begins a new era for the Tiny Desk, after 277 concerts (counting this one) in our old home.