Tiny Desk Concerts - Video

Rana Santacruz's music is as magical as his persona. His songs are filled with fantastic stories of men who make a thousand women fall in love with him, and whose funerals cause a biblical flood of tears. In honor of the Day of the Dead, watch Santacruz perform in traditional mariachi garb.

Few musicians get better with age. Nick Lowe is an exception: At 61, Lowe is part crooner, part country and a little crotchety, but with a heart of pure pop. Watch the veteran singer-songwriter perform a four-song set in the NPR Music offices.

There's nothing particularly funny about most 16th-century choral music, but the young members of the a cappella ensemble Stile Antico cracked themselves up the entire time they sound checked for this Tiny Desk Concert. But when the cameras started rolling, they were all business. Watch the 12-person ensemble perform in the NPR Music offices.

These three songs from Hey Marseilles, performed live at the NPR Music offices, benefit from a rich assortment of instrumentation: cello, viola, accordion, trumpet, snare drum, cymbal, tambourine, another gigantic drum and a pair of acoustic guitars.

The music of Lower Dens is dark but spacious and hypnotic, with swaths of feedback and echoing guitars. At the heart is Jana Hunter, a Texas-born, Baltimore-based singer and songwriter whose delicate voice haunts every song. Watch the band perform its blissed-out songs in an intimate set at the NPR Music offices.

Tom Tom Club began as a side project of Talking Heads' rhythm section: the bass of Tina Weymouth and the drums of Chris Frantz. The group's music was a staple of parties and clubs back then, and the music took on a life of its own in various samples and remakes, especially in the pop hit "Genius of Love." Watch the legendary band perform in a rare acoustic set at the NPR Music offices.

The bassist and vocalist conceived of Chamber Music Society as an intimate experience, a close musical exchange between a small group. If it was intimacy she wanted, she got her wish: Performing three songs in the constraints of our office ensures that her players were nice and cozy.

Part 2 of 2. The name Chuck Brown might not mean a whole lot to people outside the Washington, D.C., area. That would be their loss. In D.C., Brown is widely known, even revered, as the Godfather of Go-Go, a title he's held since the late '70s. So to have Brown play in a corner of the NPR Music offices with a full, plugged-in 11-member group was like a dream come true for a lot of NPR staffers.

Part 1 of 2. The name Chuck Brown might not mean a whole lot to people outside the Washington, D.C., area. That would be their loss. In D.C., Brown is widely known, even revered, as the Godfather of Go-Go, a title he's held since the late '70s. So to have Brown play in a corner of the NPR Music offices with a full, plugged-in 11-member group was like a dream come true for a lot of NPR staffers.

Led by Ari Picker, who studied film scoring at Berklee, Lost in the Trees creates a cinematic blend of storytelling and strings. There's freshness and excitement to the music he writes, and that comes through in his arrangements of cellos, violins, tubas, French horns, guitar and more. Here, the band performs three of its new songs in the NPR Music offices.

Barzelay may be the most underrated songwriter in the business today, with a sneakily firm grasp on poignancy and humor, and his live performances convey a kind of awkwardly fidgety fearlessness. Here, he mixes old and new in a charming four-song set at the NPR Music offices.

The young cellist plays Bach with elegance, and takes listeners through the back streets of Buenos Aires with a gripping performance of Omaramor, Osvaldo Golijov's tribute to tango singer Carlos Gardel. Watch her performance at the offices of NPR Music.

Cline, the preposterously skillful and adaptable guitarist's guitarist, is known mostly for his nasty solos with Wilco. But he's also part of the underground rock and free-jazz scenes, in which he's made challenging and expressive music with countless musicians, including those in The Nels Cline Singers. Cline's short set in the NPR Music offices serves as a rare and intimate master class from a thoughtful musician.

Tijoux is proof that hip-hop knows no boundaries. In this intimate performance at the Tiny Desk, the French-born Chilean rapper held a mid-afternoon crowd enthralled with her rhythmic flow and songs from her most recent album, 1977.

It's not quite right to suggest that Brian Courtney Wilson transformed NPR Music's boisterous, slightly disheveled, certainly overcrowded office into a church on a Wednesday afternoon earlier this summer. It's more like he made us realize that church music can be played just about anywhere.