Tiny Desk Contest

The 2025 Tiny Desk Contest is now open! The folks at NPR Music are thrilled to be back for another year, searching for the next great undiscovered artist to play a Tiny Desk concert.

First, meet this year's judges — the folks who will be watching thousands of entries from independent artists across the country and eventually selecting a winner. Bobby Carter and Robin Hilton are returning as Tiny Desk experts. They're welcoming Felix Contreras, a Tiny Desk producer and host of NPR's Alt. Latino, on board as well.

They have three Tiny Desk alums on the panel: singer-songwriter Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff; Bay Area rapper LaRussell; and singer, rapper and songwriter Audrey Nuna. Each of these artists put on exceptional shows behind the Desk, and they're eager to find a new artist who will do the same.

There are also a few folks from beloved NPR member stations: Raina Douris, host of World Cafe at member station WXPN in Philadelphia, and Ayana Contreras, host of Soulful Strut on KUVO Jazz in Denver. Plus publicist Judy Miller Silverman, who, as the founder of Motormouthmedia, has an ear for great new talent.

Here's how to enter:

1. Record a video of you (or you and your band) playing one original song behind a (big or small) desk.
2. Upload your video to YouTube.
3. Complete the entry form at npr.org/tinydeskcontest by 11:59 p.m. ET on Feb. 10. 

Those who submit to the Contest join a growing community of passionate independent musicians from across the country. Many entrants will be featured by NPR Music in some way — whether it be on our YouTube channel as part of our Top Shelf series, our Instagram where we feature notably creative entries, on air when Weekend Edition shares entrants' stories, at live shows this summer or right here on All Things Considered where we'll share the best entries of different genres.

The winner will get to play a real Tiny Desk concert — as well as be interviewed on All Things Considered, play a 10-city tour and be paired with a music industry mentor.

Questions? Artists can start by taking the Contest's eligibility quiz. They can also skim our FAQ and read our official rules.

Finally, we wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the thousands of artists from the Los Angeles area who have joined the Contest community over the years, and who may have been affected by this month's fires. We understand the profound impact this disaster may be having on your capacity to create music at this time, and will keep you informed about the possibility of extending the Feb. 10 Contest deadline. For those who have the resources to help people in Los Angeles, here's a spreadsheet listing mutual aid efforts.

Ellie Barber, who performs under the moniker Ollella, has been a finalist for NPR's Tiny Desk Contest not once, but twice. The Seattle-based indie folk cellist and vocalist was first recognized for her 2022 entry, "Lava." This year, she's a finalist for her song, "Tea Kettle Tea," an homage to her aunt.

"She was a second mother figure to me," Ollella says. "She was my first music teacher."

Ollella told NPR her aunt helped raise her and her sister after their parents' divorce. "My aunt was a very creative person," she remembers. "She had this wall in her house that she designated for my sister and I to paint on." They would sing opera at full volume and sit together at the piano bench, working through the keys.

Her aunt died of cancer when Ollella was 11 years old. "Tea Kettle Tea" tells of her memories from that time — "I remember when we would draw /
Orca whales all over your walls" — vignettes of life being creative and joyful, and then the two-year period where her aunt was sick.

Her aunt was a hand surgeon — she restored musicians' ability to play. "She was incredibly smart," says Ollella. But as the cancer progressed, her mind started to wander. "You talked nonsense, mind in the weeds," Ollella writes in the song.

The title, "Tea Kettle Tea," comes from one ritual they had together. In quiet moments, Ollella's aunt would make them chamomile tea with milk and honey from a special tea kettle that she'd serve in special tea cups. "At the time it was the fanciest thing I had ever touched," she laughs.

Kendall Rock

Ollella sings and plays cello on the track. She started playing cello when she was 9 and played classical music through college. She tells NPR that "Tea Kettle Tea" poured out of her in what she describes as a "three-day songwriting trance, alternating between sobbing and feverish lyric writing."

"I had just moved into an apartment for the first time on my own and had just finished unpacking all my belongings and had pulled out my cello," she remembers, "and this melody had come out of nowhere. It just kind of fell into my lap. And it ended up bringing me down this whole experience of writing this song and kind of grieving my aunt in a way that I hadn't ever before."

It took about six months of practice before Ollella says she could make it through the whole song without crying. But now when she plays it, she feels catharsis, and she hopes that's what the song can be for others, too. "I hope that this song helps people grieve in their own ways," she says. And often, someone will come up to her after a performance with tears in their eyes. "That's what's cool about this is that I have learned how relatable this experience is. It's made me realize that people are grieving all the time."

It feels like a gift, she says, to be able to share such an intimate moment with a stranger, all because of a piece of music.

For more Tiny Desk Contest 2024 content, you can head here.

Nearly 7,000 independent artists entered this year's Tiny Desk Contest, NPR Music's annual search for the next great undiscovered artist. Earlier today, Morning Edition revealed the winner: a Sacramento producer, singer, rapper and multi-instrumentalist who performs as The Philharmonik. As he soaks in his big win and prepares to travel to NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C., to perform a Tiny Desk concert, songwriter Christian Gates joins Juana Summers to share the story behind his winning entry.

One of the requirements when submitting to the Tiny Desk Contest is that each video must feature a desk. (It shows the judges that artists are prepared to play behind the real Tiny Desk; plus, it's fun.) Gates says that desks usually make him feel as if he's deviating from his own path by working for someone else. Eventually, he decided he needed to work at his own desk.

In a YouTube comment on his video, Gates shouts out the Sacramento community, which helped him see this vision through when he said he didn't have a single penny to his name.

Gates expands on this comment in his All Things Considered interview, sharing with Summers that he went through a dark and humbling time last year. While driving for Uber in order to make ends meet, he got into a bad car accident and could no longer work.

"I was really scrounging up money for change, to even do shows," he says. "I had these big visions for shows where I wanted nine people playing with me — but I couldn't afford it. And as the months went by it got progressively worse. And my other bills started to fall behind, too."

Then, when the Tiny Desk Contest opened, he asked his community for a favor.

"I said, hey, I think we could do good in this Contest if we execute this vision — but I really need your guys' help with this," Gates explains. "And everybody, absolutely everybody, came through to help me with no hesitation."

Gates says that since winning the Contest, it feels like his life has changed overnight.

"I'm glad that I went through the struggle, because [now] this win feels so honest to me, to what I believe in. It's a reflection of what I've worked for," he shares. "So I'm eternally grateful for everything that I've gone through, good and bad."

This summer, Gates and his eight-piece band will headline the 10-city Tiny Desk Contest On The Road tour. You can get tickets to see The Philharmonik, plus other local Contest entrants, at npr.org/tinydeskcontest.

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This year's winner will perform in front of the famous Tiny Desk bookshelves. NPR hide caption

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This year's winner will perform in front of the famous Tiny Desk bookshelves.

NPR

NPR Music's Tiny Desk Contest is back. As of this morning, artists can submit an entry for the opportunity to play their own Tiny Desk concert, go on tour with NPR Music — and more. This isn't just another regular year of the Contest — it's the 10th anniversary, and it's going all out.

First, the panel of judges — the folks who will ultimately decide who the winner is — has doubled in size compared to previous years. Joining Tiny Desk producers Bobby Carter and Robin Hilton are Tiny Desk alums Bobby Wooten, Durand Bernarr, Julien Baker, MUNA, NEFFY and NIKI. Each of these artists knows firsthand what it takes to perform an impressive set behind the Desk. The panel also has a crew of industry experts who are eager to see what this year's crop of up-and-coming musicians has to share — that's publicist Loren Medina, manager Brendan O'Connell, record label president Nabil Ayers and writer (and former WBGO host) Keanna Faircloth. And there's a mighty team of NPR Member station hosts on the panel: Amelia Mason of WBUR, Novena Carmel of KCRW and Stas THEE Boss of KEXP. Learn more about all the judges on the Tiny Desk Contest website.

Also new this year: Not only will the 2024 winner play a Tiny Desk concert, be interviewed on All Things Considered and go on tour with NPR Music — they'll also be paired with a mentor in the industry who will help them navigate their music journey. Our judges are determined to give this year's winner the support they'll need to take their music to the next level.

And for the first time this year, the Contest is introducing a fan favorite vote. Later this spring, Contest judges will share their favorite entries as part of the annual Tiny Desk Contest Top Shelf series on YouTube — and then artists and fans will be able to cast a vote for their favorite among those selections.

And that tour we mentioned? The Contest is going bigger there, too. This year the Tiny Desk Contest On The Road tour will visit: Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Seattle; Petaluma, Calif.; Atlanta; Austin; Chicago; Brooklyn; New Orleans; and Philadelphia. In most of these cities, Contest artists local to the area will open the show. The winner will also be featured at two festivals this summer: Celebrate Brooklyn and, for the first time, the Millennium Park Summer Music series in Chicago.

Here's how to enter:

1. Record a video of you playing one original song — behind a desk.
2. Upload your video to YouTube.
3. Submit the video on our Tiny Desk Contest website by Feb. 21 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Questions? Artists can take this quick quiz to make sure they're eligible to win, plus check out Contest FAQs and official rules.

And a final reminder: Entry videos don't need to be fancy. The Tiny Desk is where artists go to strip down their big productions. Contest judges are looking for artists to submit something that's true to them and brand new to the Tiny Desk.

Nashville-based artist Crystal Rose displays a lot of emotion in her 2023 Tiny Desk Contest entry, "Mad Black Woman." It's one of the things about her performance that most impressed Tiny Desk Contest judge Sharon Van Etten, who featured Rose's entry in an episode of Tiny Desk Contest Top Shelf.

Rose — one of a handful of Contest artists whose stories we're sharing on Weekend Edition this summer — hasn't always felt like she could share those feelings.

"Being the only Black person in the [white] spaces I grew up in was difficult," Rose shares. "I noticed that I was different and it made me feel like I had to do more to be accepted ... I was always going to be noticed for anything I did."

Rose moved around a lot and says she didn't know how to release the pain she was feeling.

Tiny Desk Contest

Watch Kina Zore's literal jam session for the Tiny Desk Contest

"There was a time when I was a very, very angry person," she says. "They labeled me impulsive. Being angry all the time as a kid really got me in a lot of places I didn't want to be."

But then, at age 13, she won a music competition and had the opportunity to sing the National Anthem at a local university — and music helped her find her power.

"I think that was the moment I told myself 'this is cool — this is something I want to do,'" she says. "Applause felt like validation."

Rose says it was cathartic to perform "Mad Black Woman," which "tells the story of how many times people will perceive us to be smaller than we are — when in reality, we are all dynamic, complicated and quite extraordinary."

She tells Weekend Edition that she appreciated being able to submit a video so that she could express herself. "I didn't want to just sit down and sing the song — I really wanted to feel everything I was singing," she shares.

"Keep your head up / Eyes front / Fall in line / Always play nice / Stay poised and loyal / Maybe I've grown tired of keeping it together," she sings in the entry. "For me to be able to talk about my life experiences as a Black woman ... it feels powerful to me because there was a point in time where I couldn't say that I wanted to be angry," she says.

"It's not just anger," she eventually realized. "It's power. It feels like I'm taking back my power."

Members of Kina Zore, a Boston-based band led by Helder Tsinine, play some pretty unusual instruments in their 2023 Tiny Desk Contest submission, "Covid 19." In addition to Tsinine on guitar and Galen Willett on bass, you see band members playing pots and pans, pouring water and employing jars of jam, pickles and even protein powder as drums. The band's unique approach to making its song is part of what made it stand out to this year's Contest judges (including Sharon Van Etten, who included the entry in an episode of Tiny Desk Contest Top Shelf). It's one of a handful of impressive entries Weekend Edition is featuring this summer.

Tsinine says the idea for the entry came naturally to the band members, who have been playing music together since 2009. "We were in the kitchen talking about submitting to the Contest and thought, 'we should just record it right here!'," he shares.

Sung in Tsinine's native language of Ronga, the song "Covid 19" reflects upon the everyday struggles many faced during lockdown, and also acknowledges that some were facing much bigger challenges, like war. He says he had the idea for the song while listening to NPR one day — he heard a reporter talking about numerous major conflicts throughout the world and it put his own lockdown experience into perspective. Tsinine says the song's refrain, "Sekelekane Mu Nyhima" means "please stand up and salute the doctors, teachers and soldiers who put their life on the line to help everyone in need."

Tsinine also shed light on the experiences and musical influences that shape his art. He grew up in Mozambique during the civil war and says he named the group Kina Zore in an effort to revive a forgotten traditional Mozambique dance by the same name. He didn't grow up with any instruments — he improvised with whatever he could find, much like his Contest entry video — but was fascinated by traditional African instruments and American rock musicians. Eventually he began playing guitar, and describes his musical style as a blend of those influences.

NPR Music received nearly 6,000 entries to this year's Tiny Desk Contest, the annual search for the next great undiscovered artist to play a Tiny Desk concert. But one Springville, Utah, band rose to the top as its entry surprised the judges, moved them to tears and filled them with hope.

Today, we're thrilled to announce Little Moon is the winner of the 2023 Tiny Desk Contest.

This is Little Moon's fourth year entering the Contest, a real testament to never giving up. Little Moon's entries have impressed Contest judges since 2020, but this year, the band leveled up — and the judges noticed. Albina Cabrera of NPR Member station KEXP shared the band's winning entry, "Wonder Eye," as one of her favorites on Top Shelf last month, noting its powerful message and applauding singer Emma Hardyman's exceptional voice and the togetherness of the entire band. A few weeks later, when all the judges came together to decide on a winner, the decision to crown Little Moon was unanimous. "Emma's deceptively strong voice, and the band's ability to take the music to places completely unexpected, catapulted 'Wonder Eye' to the top of the heap of wonderful entries," said Tiny Desk series producer Bobby Carter. Singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten said Hardyman's vocal range was "out of this world." Series creator Bob Boilen shared: "The song is a dynamic and explosive tune with a deeply emotional story."

Emma Hardyman told us the song was written under heavy circumstances: Her mother-in-law was in hospice care, while she and her husband, bassist Nathan Hardyman, were in the process of leaving the Mormon church. "Mormonism believes in life after death, resurrection and eternal families," she said. "There is beauty and comfort in our former beliefs of certainty, light and life; we honor and respect such teachings. But we also find deep beauty in uncertainty, darkness, chaos and death. Perhaps it's all one and the same."

She added: "Perhaps this song was written because we realized we have been mourning various deaths our whole lives. ... Perhaps it took a major, physical death of a loved one to see that death is happening all the time — that we are always grieving something, that accepting the mysterious, shadowy nature of death can deepen one's sense of humanity and soften the ways we see ourselves and each other." You can hear more from Hardyman this afternoon, when she'll do her first NPR interview as the Contest winner on All Things Considered.

Soon, Little Moon — Emma and Nathan Hardyman, plus keys player Bly Wallentine, harpist Bridget Jackson, drummer Chris Shemwell and electric guitarist Grace Johnson — will play a Tiny Desk concert at NPR's Washington, D.C., headquarters. And in June, the band will headline the annual Tiny Desk Contest On The Road tour, playing alongside local Contest entrants (soon to be announced) across the country. You can get tickets for the tour at NPRPresents.org.