Bob Boilen

On this week's All Songs Considered we talk about the secrets to being happy and how they relate to a euphoric new track from the electro-pop group Passion Pit. We'll hear the first song from Franz Ferdinand's collaboration with one of Bob Boilen's favorite bands from the early ...

Death Cab For Cutie came as a trio: Ben Gibbard sang, Nick Harmer played bass, and we wheeled in our piano for Zac Rae. This intimate set included two new songs — including "Black Sun," the first single from their new album Kintsugi.

The album title refers to ...

Every Thursday this year we're celebrating All Songs Considered's 15th birthday with personal memories and highlights from the show's decade and a half online and on the air. If you have a story about the show you'd like to share, drop us an email: allsongs@npr.org.

In March of ...

On All Songs Considered this week, we hear two songs by familiar musicians, one stripped down to his essence and one in a brand new context. Ryan Adams is at his best live, playing solo acoustic hits, with lots of comical chatter. The prolific singer and songwriter has a ...

In 2013, I fell in love with the video for the song "Gasoline" by the Australian band Alpine, which mixed explosive choreography with incredible editing to make a lightweight song feel both intimate and explosive. "Gasoline" came from the album A is for Alpine, an adventure in airy ...

It's hard to believe that it hasn't quite been a year since the first Sylvan Esso album came out. The odd yet perfect marriage of Nick Sanborn's electronics with Amelia Meath's voice feels like a familiar friend by now. And yet seeing these songs performed softly — and captured ...

What a killer song. In fact, of all the tunes the All Songs Considered crew inspected before we headed down to Austin for SXSW, "Colors," the debut single by Genevieve, was the team favorite.

Genevieve's official video for "Colors" furthers the song's message: Find pride in who you are. ...

After a week of 16-hour days and little-to-no sleep, the All Songs Considered gang is back from Austin with a slew of musical discoveries from the 2015 South by Southwest music festival. On this week's show, hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton are joined by NPR Music's Stephen Thompson to ...

If you love music as much as we do (we really love music), there's a good chance that this is one of your favorite weeks of the year. This is when the massive South by Southwest music festival and conference bubbles up and spills over into the streets of Austin, ...

Spoiler alert: The Punch Brothers came to the Tiny Desk on Chris Thile's birthday. We made him a cake and gave him an NPR surprise! This wasn't the first time the brilliant mandolinist had brought a project to my desk, it was his fourth. The last ...

On this week's All Songs Considered, we look at one of life's immutable truths: Nothing's ever easy! Or, at least some things are way harder than they need to be. That's part of the message in the new kiss-off song that opens our show, "Hot Scary Summer," from the upcoming ...

It says a lot that, with almost 7,000 entries to choose from, we selected Fantastic Negrito as the winner of our Tiny Desk Concert Contest. For his winning submission, he performed "Lost In A Crowd" in a freight elevator in Oakland. It was his passion, his voice and ...

If you're attracted to the strange, then you must watch "The Strangest Eyes." The music video for this song, by Wasted Wine, feels like a bastard child of David Lynch and Nick Cave. There's humor, but damn it's dark.

Wasted Wine is from Taylors, South Carolina. You can hear the ...

BOOTS is the project of musician Jordan Asher. You may have heard his work in collaboration with Beyoncé on her self-titled 2013 album. Now he has his own project, this 30 minute self-directed film built around five of his songs. That project, and an accompanying soundtrack EP by BOOTS, is ...

I like music videos best when they turn me onto a new artist. This riveting stop-motion video has me listening to the music of Eskmo, an L.A. composer and producer and the moniker of Brendan Angelides. The video is reminiscent of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" — both feature a ...

This week on All Songs Considered, we get heavy — heavy lyrics, heavy themes — as hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton explore the meaning of life, even breaking it down to the atomic level, with existential music from English folk singer Bill Fay, Björk and more.

Bill ...

What a night! NPR Music will be at SXSW in Austin, Texas on Wednesday, March 18 to present an amazing night of music. Courtney Barnett will play her entire new album live, the week before it comes out. Stromae, a European star who has racked up ...

I first saw Phox in an impromptu concert at a restaurant in Philadelphia. I thought the band was talented and charming, and I still do. Phox is six friends from Baraboo, Wis., who make pretty, catchy music. The group's not-so-secret weapon is Monica Martin, who sings with a smoky ...

Pokey LaFarge's passion for women, storytelling and American blues and gospel all come together on this song, the title track of his new album, Something in the Water. LaFarge wrote to us to tell us that the song "is about the ups and downs of a Midwestern love ...

It's rare to be a choreographer with a rock band, or a rock band with a choreographer, but that's much of what makes People Get Ready unique. Steven Reker is a graceful dancer who sometimes straps his guitar around his waist and spins while the neck of the guitar hammers ...