TV On The Radio Finally Performs NPR ‘Tiny Desk Concert’

TV On the Radio performed a long-desired Tiny Desk Concert for NPR Music. The band celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut album played a career-spanning four-song set.

TV On The Radio was asked to record a Tiny Desk Concert 15 years ago but for unconfirmed reasons, it never materialized.

“Thank you for having us here, I don’t know what happened 15 years ago,” lead singer Tunde Adebimpe told the Tiny Desk audience. “I think someone missed a phone call or an email ’cause we wanted to do it for a while. Sometimes we found ourselves in an office just going, ‘we could play here.’ And now it’s happened, dreams are coming true.”

“Sometimes we’ve been sitting around talking amongst ourselves just saying, ‘I don’t know why they don’t want us. Why not us?’” guitarist Kyp Malone added.

Adebimpe and Malone’s TVOTR bandmate, guitarist Jaleel Bunton, recently released a 20th-anniversary expanded reissue of their 2004 debut album, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, but opted for songs from their other releases. “Wolf Like Me,” from 2006’s Return To Cookie Mountain got the mini-concert underway.

Multi-instrumentalist Yusuke Yamamoto then played vibraphone on “Could You” from the 2014 album, Seeds. The set, which also featured Japhet Landis on drums, concluded with two songs from TVOTR’s EP Young Liars, wrapping up with “Satellite” and the vibes adorned title track from the 2003 release.

TV On The Radio continues their run at New York City’s Webster Hall on Friday, November 29. Watch their long-awaited Tiny Desk Concert below: