Sam Phillips

If you love seeing live concerts, chances are you've gone to shows where the clinking beer bottles and incessant crowd chatter were louder than the music. After seeing the soft spoken Laura Gibson lose out to a noisy audience during a show in Austin, TX, All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen and Song of the Day editor Stephen Thompson came up with a novel solution: They invited Gibson to play at the NPR Music offices, specifically Bob Boilen's desk, launching what's now called the Tiny Desk Concert series.

Of all of Sam Phillips' roles as a musician — first as a contemporary Christian singer, later as an ornate pop artist — her latest incarnation is the most alluring. Her jangly, mostly acoustic songs rattle and shake with graceful, noirish tales of broken lives. Phillips is currently on tour in support of her latest CD, Don't Do Anything. She showcased the album in a full concert, recorded live at the Rams Head in Annapolis, Md.

The music of Sam Phillips unfolds like perfect, miniature pop dramas. Her new album, Don't Do Anything, is loaded with great ones. Of all her incarnations as a performer — first as a Christian singer, then as a pop singer — the current Sam Phillips is one of the most alluring. On this Tiny Desk performance, recorded live at the desk of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen, Phillips performs four songs from her latest CD.

Critics call her "alluring" and "utterly enchanting." At Carnegie Hall, Sam Phillips delights her audience with her own songs of love and heartbreak. The Section String Quartet and Phillips' own band join her in an unplugged performance.

For the first time in her 20-year career, singer-songwriter Sam Phillips goes it alone on the curiously titled Don't Do Anything. Phillips performs songs from her album with violinist and guitarist Erik Gorfain in a session on World Cafe.

If you love seeing live concerts, chances are you've gone to shows where the clinking beer bottles and incessant crowd chatter were louder than the music. After seeing the soft spoken Laura Gibson lose out to a noisy audience during a show in Austin, TX, All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen and Song of the Day editor Stephen Thompson came up with a novel solution: They invited Gibson to play at the NPR Music offices, specifically Bob Boilen's desk, launching what's now called the Tiny Desk Concert series.

Later this month Bob Dylan, will release his 33rd studio disc, and based on our early listen, it's going to be stunning. On this edition of All Songs Considered we've got a preview of the new Dylan record, Together Through Life, with the song "Beyond Here Lies Nothing." Also on the program: a new, self-released single from Sam Phillips, singer Jill Sobule, Malian duo Amadou and Mariam, solo music from The Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson, a collaboration between Orenda Fink and Scalpelist, and an exclusive live cut from Grizzly Bear's recent South by Southwest performance.

It's been a great year for the quiet and the subtle: The harmonies of Fleet Foxes, the fiery gentleness of Bon Iver and the African kora of Toumani Diabate were all calming company. We all need and want different things from music at different times, and gentility won out this year.

Phillips' loyalties in the war between dreamy romanticism and bitter pessimism seem to always be in question, so it's hard to know what to make of the title track to her latest album. "Don't Do Anything" could be a declaration of unconditional devotion, or a withering putdown.

Singer-songwriter Sam Phillips makes gorgeously textured, spare acoustic music. Hear a cut from her mesmerizing new CD Don't Do Anything. The keyboard-and-drums duo Mates of State are back with their best album yet, the stunning Re-Arrange Us. Also on the show: the whimsical world of Rupa and the April Fishes, a classic reissued from Jethro Tull, New Orleans pianist Henry Butler, and Rachel Taylor Brown, another great unknown from our Second Stage series.

Before Sam Phillips made noir-pop records like Fan Dance, she made impeccably attired, slightly high-strung art-pop (see Martinis and Bikinis) that happily walked in the shadow of The Beatles. And before that, she was Leslie Phillips, purveyor of compelling Christian pop.

Phillips' loyalties in the war between dreamy romanticism and bitter pessimism seem to always be in question, so it's hard to know what to make of the title track to her latest album. "Don't Do Anything" could be a declaration of unconditional devotion, or a withering putdown.