Cyrena Touros

Rodrigo Amarante is full of bird facts.

When we meet him at his home, sitting out on his wooden deck that overlooks northeast LA, his doors and windows are all open, sunshine cascading through them. Amarante sits cross-legged underneath a patio umbrella that he's fashioned wheels on so that it can move easily with the sun. Despite making shade, he wears round, turtle-shell sunglasses as he fiddles with a bottle-top, pondering what inspired the genesis of his second solo album.

Songwriter Lucy Dacus grew up spending summers at Vacation Bible School and during the school year, sometimes skipping class to go to the movies with her friends in her hometown of Richmond, Va. Her third and latest album, Home Video, is an autobiographical, coming-of-age tale that borrows from those real life events she's tracked in journals since she was young.

There's an old writing exercise that involves describing a color without naming it; it challenges the writer to evoke the emotional primacy of a concept we often take for granted.

Throughout the next few months, we'll be sharing some of the many 2020 Tiny Desk Contest entries that have caught our eyes and ears. There's still time to enter: We're accepting videos until 11:59 p.m. ET on March 30. You can watch a playlist of all the entries we've featured on the blog on YouTube.

Pete Townshend: Not only is he the major creative force behind The Who, but he's also released several of his own solo records, prompted the first-known use of the term "rock opera" (for 1969's Tommy) and he's even credited with being the first person to smash a guitar on stage.

This year's Tiny Desk Contest judges are excited to finally be getting ready to pick the 2019 winner. In the meantime, there's a lot going on in the Tiny Desk Contest community.

Update: You voted, we listened. This week's fan-favorite Dog of the Tiny Desk Contest is: Juice and her human, Crys Matthews.

Matthews' shuffling acoustic tune with its campfire sing-along chorus captured your hearts as it put into words the life-changing learning experience that is loving a dog: "Won't you teach me how to be a little more like you / How to always see the best in people no matter what they do," Matthews sings.

The Tiny Desk Contest judges are one week closer to picking this year's winner — and in the meantime, there's a lot going on in the Tiny Desk Contest community.

You can participate in our weekly fan favorite votes, where we gather up some entries around a fun theme and ask you, the fans, to pick your favorite. There's still time to take part in this week's vote: Desks of the Tiny Desk Contest!

The British singer-songwriter and 2018 Slingshot artist was a critical and fan favorite last month at SXSW, and she seems to be riding that success all the way to one of late night television's biggest stages, The Tonight Show.

A whole generation of musicians born in the 1980s have released formative albums in the last few years that mine the production landscape of their birth decade. Thunderous synths, trash-can lid percussion, and the volcanic, Phil Collins-style drum fills are back en vogue. Truly, the percussive emphasis of a well-timed shimmy of castanets is the tragically forgotten chef's kiss of '80s pop production.

On Laura Jean Anderson's debut single, she expertly checks most of these boxes and adds a diva-sized belt to the mix.

Skating Polly's music has skittered back and forth along the genre spectrum between alt-rock and what it calls "ugly pop." The band's lead single for The Make It All Show, "Queen for a Day," skews towards rock as it drips with punk sensibilities: from Kelli Mayo's snarling vocal performance to the simple and stripped down verses leading into the thrashing of guitars on the chorus.