NPR Music: Tiny Desk Concerts

Tiny Desk Concerts from NPR's All Songs Considered features your favorite musicians performing at Bob Boilen's desk in the NPR Music office. This is the AUDIO only archive.Are you a fancy A/V nerd and need video? Visit our new Tiny Desk Concert video channel. Eye-popping video and all of the music you've come to expect.

The 1975: Tiny Desk Concert

NPR | By Stephen Thompson

Published September 10, 2013 at 6:00 AM MDT

As lead singer of the youthful Manchester band The 1975, Matthew Healy has cranked out a batch of enjoyably wiry songs, most notably the singles "Chocolate" and "Sex" — each of which has attracted more than a million YouTube plays. The group has been bubbling up, here and in the U.K., for the last year or two, as it's toured with Muse and released an album and four EPs full of brash-but-winsome, electronics-tinged pop-rock.

So The 1975 knows its way around bigness. But, when asked to strip his band's sound down to fit the intimate confines of the Tiny Desk, Healy didn't hesitate to transform both his songs and himself. Performing solo with a guitar — he even goes fully acoustic for his two hits — he's reborn as an earnest troubadour, while his songs now register as melancholy musings. They're remarkably sturdy in any form, as this bit of left-field sweetness amply demonstrates.

Set List

"Sex"

"Chocolate"

"Woman"

Credits

Producers: Bob Boilen, Denise DeBelius; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Parker Miles Blohm, Denise DeBelius, Erica Yoon; photo by Hayley Bartels/NPR