Tagged: Tiny Desk Concerts

The big sound of Milagres is built from small, simple elements: the boom of the kick drum, the clack of the claves, the repetitive tap-tap-tapping of a piano. This is a band of selective minimalism — which, in the end, somehow gets me thinking about the big sounds Phil Spector made. It's all about attention to detail, and Milagres is a band that cares.

Here at NPR Music, we don't impose an awful lot of limits when it comes to hosting musicians and their instruments behind (and occasionally on top of) Bob Boilen's desk.

In a recent conversation with the Washington, D.C.-based Latin radio personality Pedro Biaggi, I asked him about the massive growth of the bachata genre. He said it was barely present in his station's format a few decades ago, but that today, it's roughly 70 percent of what he plays.

Red Baraat is the best party band I've seen in years. The group plays rollicking funk music steeped in Northern India's wedding celebrations, with a dash of D.C. go-go beats and hip-hop. It's all driven by Sunny Jain's dhol, a double-sided barrel drum that hangs down low around his body.