Lars Gotrich

At the Tiny Desk, the guitarist plays quiet, gentle melodies inspired by his Texas panhandle home.

In his horn, subway cars rumbled, buses hissed, traffic screeched and sirens howled. Homeless for more than a decade, Gayle was forever in conversation with the streets of New York.

In his work alongside bandmate Adam Wiltzie, McBride warped and wondered at new pathways for ambient music.

The San Jose emo band punctuates every damning self-reflection with a hook to remember.

Summer feels infinite, but also rushed in its impermanence. Roséwave bottles that infinity with a soundtrack that spans generations and genres of music.

For nearly four decades, the band has terrorized planet Earth with its raucous stage shows, raunchy metal songs and grotesque satire. GWAR finally came to destroy the Tiny Desk, once and for all.

Musician Garry Brents has been a prolific creator of extreme metal for years, but his latest project returns to his first love, '90s nu metal, through a dystopian lens.

Dreams in Splattered Lines refines the long-running noise band's approach to cinematic horror: still gross and grueling, but painted in thicker strokes of neon gloom.

Threadbare demos on a new reissue of 1998's Overcome by Happiness illuminate Joe Pernice's songwriting paradox: Brill Building pop woven from homespun scruff, sarcastic but always sure-footed.

The band recaptures a shredded tension on its second new album after a two-decade hiatus: You feel the crushing effects of the world upon humanity, and the occasional glimpse of beauty.

The singer and co-founder of the psychedelic group died at home in São Paulo.

The minimalist English octet stresses a communal spirit in its Tiny Desk performance.

With a who's who of forward-thinking guitarists, Bill Orcutt brings his ecstatic minimalism to the Tiny Desk.

As much as Pedigo's songcraft has changed, a tender smirk remains behind each pluck and strum here.

The Athens, Ga., group has always felt like a myth hidden in plain sight. In a newly unearthed studio session, hear the band reverse-engineer punk's primitive roots to craft a circus-like surrealism.

The New Zealand band writes sparkling indie pop underpinned by empathy. At the Tiny Desk, you can hear that support and camaraderie in the band's stripped-down arrangements and dry banter.

A testament to her heartstring-tugging taste and temperament, Grant dares us to leave a world worth living in.

The band pulls off a pop music magic trick, indulging nostalgia and crafting a vintage '90s patchwork dress in pop song form.

Water is a fitting metaphor for Sage's music, in which stories, sounds, emotions and motions overlap not with a clash but a surprising ease.

Songwriter Tommy Marolda delivers a deliciously clever power-pop soap opera in three minutes.