Watch practically every Philadelphia video entered in NPR Music’s 2017 Tiny Desk Contest
In case you missed it, a wildly wonderful group out of New Orleans called Tank & The Bangas was crowned the champion of this year’s NPR Music Tiny Desk Contest. Their video, filmed in a school room, beat out over 6,000 other entries from around the country in the third annual Tiny Desk Concert spin-off, including a record number of submissions from the Philadelphia area.
With the Tiny Desk Philly concert rolling into World Cafe live tomorrow night, we’ve rounded up the local entries below, including the submissions from Hardwork Movement, ILL DOOTS, Aphra, and Maitland that earned them slots at the show.
The 150+ Philly submission count is up from 131 last year and 75 the first year. In with familiar faces like A Day Without Love, The Bigness, and West Philadelphia Orchestra are new (to us) acts Raven Katz, Baby & Shylow (a collab from Grandchildren’s Shari and Aleks), Eastside Astroknots and so many more.
Judging the slew of original songs, all performed near a desk as per the official Tiny Desk Concerts, was a panel that included NPR Music’s Robin Hilton and Bob Boilen, along with World Cafe host Talia Schlanger, Phish frontman Trey Anastastio, WFUV’s Rita Houston, and Stas THEE Boss of KEXP and THEESatisfaction.
Click through below to watch nearly every Philly entry from 2017 — some submissions were taken offline after the winner was revealed, alas — and revisit past years’ submissions here and here. Let us know your favorite entries or any submissions we may have missed in the comments!