Cyrena Touros

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.

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.