This Utah band beat out nearly 6,000 entries to win NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest
Out of nearly 6,000 entries from bands and artists, “Wonder Eye” rose to the top as it moved the judges of NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest to tears.
In the music video, singer-songwriter Emmy Hardyman sits on the red carpet of a candle-lit room, strumming her guitar as she gently sings.
Count up on fingers all my days to the minute
Time getting shorter now the longer I’m in it
To where we are and where we go
Wonder I, wonder I
And when I go I’ll give my all
To the sky, to the sky
Wonder I, wonder I
About a minute into the video, the full band — including a harp, drums, bass and keys — comes in and intensifies the sound as Hardyman’s ethereal voice soars into higher ranges.
“Emma’s deceptively strong voice, and the band’s ability to take the music to places completely unexpected, catapulted ‘Wonder Eye’ to the top of the heap of wonderful entries,” NPR’s Tiny Desk series producer Bobby Carter said in a statement, with singer-songwriter and Tiny Desk judge Sharon Van Etten describing Hardyman’s vocal range as “out of this world.”
The song won over the judges of NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest and led to a unanimous decision: Little Moon, a band out of Springville, Utah, was this year’s winner.
Little Moon wins NPR’s 2023 Tiny Desk Contest
This year actually marked the fourth time Little Moon has entered the Tiny Desk Contest, which NPR launched in 2014.
“I was used to not winning,” Hardyman told NPR’s Ari Shapiro earlier this month.
“It’s like when your crush likes you back,” joked Nathan Hardyman, Hardyman’s husband and the bassist of Little Moon.
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“Wonder Eye” has now made Little Moon the ninth winner of the Tiny Desk Contest. The band, which has folk, pop and indie rock influences, includes the Hardymans; Bly Wallentine on keys; harpist Bridget Jackson; drummer Chris Shemwell; and electric guitarist Grace Johnson.
As the latest winners, Little Moon got to perform at NPR’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“When 2023’s Tiny Desk Contest winner Little Moon arrived at NPR, outward expressions of joy overshadowed the inner bundle of nerves this Springville, Utah, band felt,” wrote Bob Boilen, the creator of the Tiny Desk Concert Series, in a description on the YouTube video shared on May 30. “Tiny Desk senior producer Bobby Carter and I, also judges, were in awe hearing singer Emma Hardyman’s 4-octave voice warming up behind the desk.”
Over roughly 17 minutes, Little Moon performed its winning number, “Wonder Eye,” and two unreleased songs that have been recorded for a new album.
Fresh off their Tiny Desk debut, Little Moon performed at Salt Lake City’s Twilight Concert Series on June 2 and will headline Fork Fest in American Fork on June 16.
A few days after that performance, the band embarks on a Tiny Desk Concert tour, playing eight shows across the country with other artists who entered the NPR contest.
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How the Tiny Desk concert series started
The inspiration for the Tiny Desk Concert series emerged after Boilen and NPR music reviewer Stephen Thompson struggled to hear folk singer Laura Gibson’s whispery voice over a rowdy crowd at a bar in Austin, Texas, during the 2008 South by Southwest Music Festival.
“When she came offstage, Stephen and I said, ‘We couldn’t hear you,’” Boilen previously told the Deseret News. “And Stephen jokingly said, ‘You oughta just come play (at) our office.’”
A few weeks later, Gibson showed up at Boilen’s desk, and out of this visit came the series’ first concert.
“As a former video producer and audio engineer, my eyes just lit up,” Boilen said. “I set up a couple of cameras and a microphone, edited (the video) and put it up, and the reaction was kind of incredible. So we kept doing it.”
Since the series’ inception, more than 600 intimate performances have been recorded live from Boilen’s desk — a colorful space cluttered with books, albums and music memorabilia. The series has featured artists from a variety of genres including The Avett Brothers, The Shins, Adele, Chance the Rapper, Wilco, Ben Folds and violinist Joshua Bell.
And how does Boilen and his NPR music staff determine what musicians to bring in? The rule is fairly simple.
”You have to be passionate about the artist in order to invite them to the desk,” he said. “You can’t just kind of like ’em. You gotta love ’em and love ’em a lot.”
