Bob Boilen

In the summer of 1971, I was a camp counselor at a sleep-away camp for a bunch of 5- to 7-year-olds. For those eight weeks, I walked home with about $50. I bought a guitar and began to learn the songs I'd come to love from the recently released Tea ...

UPDATE: This video is no longer available here.

Tomorrow, as a companion to U2's album Songs of Innocence, the band is releasing Films of Innocence, one video for each song on the album. But today we've got an early preview of the video for "Song for Someone," ...

Close your eyes and listen, and you might imagine someone who looks a bit like Otis Redding. Open them, and you're likely to see someone who looks more like your neighborhood bank teller.

That man standing on my desk in the golden shoes is Paul Janeway. He was, in fact, ...

Want to play a Tiny Desk Concert? Now's your chance: NPR Music and Lagunitas are holding a contest, and the winner gets to perform at my desk here at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.

To enter, make a video of you performing one original song behind a desk ...

Sam Amidon takes traditional music and makes it his own. He might begin with a traditional murder ballad and then morph it into something of his own, fueled by Bill Frisell's languidly atmospheric guitar, Shahzad Ismaily's minimal but essential percussion and Amidon's own yearning voice. At other times, ...

Decades ago, the potent folk songs of Cat Stevens inspired All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen to pick up acoustic guitar. Now known as Yusuf/Cat Stevens, the singer visits the All Songs studio for this week's show to discuss his path to music and share songs that inspired him ...

The loudest guy in the world came to the Tiny Desk to perform some of his quietest music. Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis, for years a guy who's turned my ears red, showed up armed with just an acoustic guitar. I even had an amp for that guitar all ...

Earlier this month, All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland to attend the annual Iceland Airwaves music festival. Kevin Cole and the crew from NPR member station KEXP were there to broadcast and record bands at the festival. The lineup included bands from around the ...

This week, Foo Fighters releases its latest project, Sonic Highways. Why "project" rather than album? Sonic Highways is more than just eight new songs. It's also an eight-part documentary currently running on HBO. Together, the album and film series look at the intersection of geography and music. It's what ...

Imagine an evening where you just around with your closest friends or family, and all you do is play music for each other. No TV or video games. No texting. Just a bunch of songs and some great conversations about what you love, or don't love and why.

It's kind ...

When it came out in February, I told friends that the Angel Olsen album Burn Your Fire For No Witness was my favorite of the year so far. Now, here in late October, my love for that record has only grown deeper. The songs are sullen at times, on ...

The folk duo Luluc's first album for Sub Pop was co-produced by the National's Aaron Dessner and will be released on July 15. More on this artist from the band's website.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Every fall, hundreds of bands migrate to New York City for the annual CMJ Music Marathon. Many of these groups are playing their first shows in NYC and for a lot of the audience — music journalists, college dj's and fans alike — it's their first taste of these young ...

Oh my god, they look so young! It was 1981 when this little Athens, Ga. based band started making a splash. Over the years that followed they made waves. This small trailer for a larger documentary about R.E.M. is a beautiful peek at innocence, youth, the '80s and MTV. The ...

Oh my god, they look so young! It was 1981 when this little Athens, Ga. based band started making a splash. Over the years that followed they made waves. This small trailer for a larger documentary about R.E.M. is a beautiful peek at innocence, youth, the '80s and MTV. The ...

Anthony D'Amato sings and writes in the tradition of Bruce Springsteen or Josh Ritter: His songs sound friendly musically, but they also tackle the difficult and the twisted. Like those great songwriters, D'Amato's work is universal without devolving into moping. There's also a spirit to these songs, ...

I see a lot of good-looking animations with music, but this one stopped me cold. The video is stunning — funny, odd and quirky, but with a sense of purpose. Rocks and totem poles sing, as do strands of DNA and a cereal box. The animation is mixed with surreal ...

Sometimes it helps to know where an artist is from. Geography can define a sound, but while Daniel Lanois is from Ontario, he might as well hail from Saturn. His new album, Flesh And Machine, defies categorization; it has no songs and no words, with voices used only to ...

When he was 20, Ásgeir Trausti Einarsson released an album in Iceland, sung in Icelandic, with many of the words written by his father. Dýrð í dauðaþögn became the biggest-selling debut in Icelandic music history. A year or so later, he rerecorded that album in English under the name ...

The Bots' members are brothers and bandmates whose playful, catchy songs rock hard. Singer-guitarist Mikaiah Lei is 21 and drummer Anaiah Lei is 17; they made their first album when they were 15 and 12, respectively. Pink Palms is their newest and best.

I hear Jimi Hendrix in ...