Tiny Desk Concerts - Video

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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)...

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...

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...

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...

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...