NPR Tiny Desk Contest 2016: The Porchistas, Homeless Apians, Fun While You Wait, Wyland

Some NJ Submissions

NPR's "Tiny Desk Concert" series is a staple of the world of musical social media. Artists head into the Washington, DC offices of NPR and perform stripped down versions of their songs to the assembled NPR staff. There have been some great ones. Off the top of my head, I can think of recent performances by Beach Slang, Hop Along, and Mitski. T-Pain gave a particularly revelatory performance. Basically, if your favorite artist has been in the midst of an album cycle at any time in the last several years, they've probably played at the Tiny Desk.

Last year, NPR gave unsigned, undiscovered talent the opportunity to vie for a spot at the desk when they launched the "Tiny Desk Contest." Bands submitted a new video and were entered for the opportunity to perform their own Tiny Desk Concert. Fantastic Negrito took the title, but there were tons of great submissions. Just this past Monday night, as a matter of fact, I got a little misty watching YJY perform as I thought back on the fact that my first introduction to them was through their Tiny Desk Contest video for "Through Being Hip."

In that spirit of discovery, I figured I'd share a few of the local-ish submissions with you here. If you or your band have done a video for this year's contest, let me know and I'll try to post it up here. If you haven't done one and would like to, I think you have until February 2nd.

This batch includes the upbeat folk pop of Fun While You Wait, the amazing solar-powered, homemade prog of Homeless Apians, the hippy pop of The Porchistas, and the epic alt rock of Wyland.

Head over to the Tiny Desk Contest site to check out the rules and to browse through all the videos posted so far. You may find a new favorite band.

Fun While You Wait (Freehold), "Target"



Homless Apians (Asbury Park), "Keeps"



The Porchistas (Montclair), "Apolitical Science"



Wyland (Kearny), "Without You"

YJY Tiny Desk Contest Entry

"Through Being Hip"

Without naming names, I'll let you know that I saw a little Twitter back and forth today that reminded me of some bands that have been circling the periphery of my consciousness. Whether it's through a mention at another site like our friends at Speak Into My Good Eye, a Facebook like, or a Twitter follow, I'll notice a band and say to myself, "Gotta check them out." I'm easily distracted, though, so it's kind of a best laid plans thing sometimes if you know what I mean.

Anyway, one of those bands is YJY, a New Jersey quartet who appear to be dabbling in some of the sounds I really like. They put out a video last week for their song "Through Being Hip" that SIMGE shared with us. I finally gave it the clickeroo today, and it's a good one.

On this song, YJY are doing that kind of Real Estate thing, winding and wrapping their single-coil guitar sounds around each other as they sing of retiring from the hipster lifestyle. The video is also an audition for NPR's Tiny Desk Contest. If YJY get enough shares of the vid with the hashtag #TinyDeskContest  by January 19th, they'll get to perform a "Tiny Desk Concert."

Check out the video below, and maybe give the guys a share if you like it.

Now onto the next thing I probably should've mentioned by now.

The Front Bottoms Hit The Tiny Desk at NPR

Tiny Desk Concert

I've pointed out before that Bergen County's The Front Bottoms have a loyal and rabid following. It's well-deserved as Brian Sella, Matt Uychich, and the rest of the band have this way of drawing people into their funny and deeply personal universe.

I reviewed their current album, Talon of the Hawk, earlier this year; and I think the band are beginning to deliver on that album's promise of wider success.

They have a sold-out show coming up at The Stone Pony at the end of this month. For those who missed out on those tickets, here's a live performance the band did at the Tiny Desk of All Songs Considered.