All Songs Considered

Over the past six years, nearly 30,000 musicians have entered NPR's annual Tiny Desk Contest in the hopes of being chosen to perform as part of NPR Music's signature music discovery series. Now, NPR is once again calling for bands and musicians to submit a video. Contest winners have gone on to tour the world, sign with major labels, open for legendary performers and even receive Grammy awards.

The opportunity to make your dream to perform at the iconic Tiny Desk come true is here: NPR wants to hear from you! The Tiny Desk Contest is back and it will be more fun than ever before with brand-new virtual events including the Tiny Desk Contest Family Hour, a Tiny Desk Trivia Night and the return of the Tiny Desk Contest Top Shelf video series.

A Tulsan by way of Detroit, Austin and Los Angeles, Tori Ruffin is the founding member of Freak Juice, a funky, hard-rocking music collaborative that includes musicians Charlie Redd (bass), Stanley Fary (drums) and Christopher Simpson (vocals). Exhorting fans to "Get in the Blender," Freak Juice delivers music that owes as much to the party ethos of '80s hair metal bands as it does to the social justice messaging of Marvin Gaye. "It's kind of like Deftones meets Miles Davis with some funk and hip-hop thrown in," Ruffin says.

This year's Tiny Desk Contest was unlike any other. Amid lockdowns, social distancing guidelines and ongoing adjustments to daily life, over 6,000 dedicated unsigned artists sent in their songs in the hopes of performing a Tiny Desk concert.

On Thursday, May 25 Different Radio will sponsor a Tiny Desk Favorites Concert at Three Heads Brewing Beer Garden (186 Atlantic Avenue), with The Mighty High And Dry, Kitestring, and Machine Gun English.

Shortly after his 82nd birthday, Leonard Cohen sat down with KCRW's Chris Douridas for an interview. The two talked about Cohen's health, the role of religion in his life, his 14th and final album, You Want It Darker, and much more.

The conversation took place at the Canadian Consulate in Los Angeles on Oct. 13 as part of a special listening session for You Want It Darker. It's the last interview Cohen gave before his death on November 7.

At some point in the 1960s, steel drum (a.k.a. pan) music became the Caribbean equivalent of cheesy Vegas lounge tunes: something only an ill-dressed tourist might fancy during a cruise ship port o' call. And true, there's probably a thousand bad pan covers of "Yellow Bird" out there, but the tradition is unfairly maligned.