NPR AZNs Pick Their Favorite Tiny Desk Concerts

For Tiny Desk Playlists, we ask musicians, creators and folks we admire to choose the Tiny Desk concerts they've come to love. To celebrate Asian/Pacific Islander American Heritage Month, we've asked some of our colleagues to curate a playlist of their favorite concerts featuring artists who trace their ancestry across the Asian continent and the Pacific Islands.

This playlist was put together by members of NPR AZNs, an employee resource group (ERG) that supports over 100 staff members who identify as Asian, Asian-American, and/or Pacific Islander at NPR. As Alexandria Lee, from NPR's Audience Relations team, and Emily Kwong, from Short Wave, explain: "Our group's mission is to serve our community through advocacy and cultural visibility, elevating APIA voices within and beyond NPR. We're very proud to curate a playlist for NPR Music and to present this compilation, thoughtfully curated by NPR AZNs members across the organization. They reflect on why these performances resonate with them."

— There's a sobriety — and a hint of bleak hilarity — that echoes in the voice of Michelle Zauner, who leads Japanese Breakfast. "I'm not the one I was then / My. Something about Zauner's storytelling sets off flares in my mind, and memories of home wash over me: drinking in a dimly lit parking lot bar, smelling the Kalachuchi trees on the way to class, feeling the dust settling under the arches of my feet. It's not fair to say the kinship I feel is simply because of her words. Her arrangements color the image of the past that I find myself yearning for, too. —