The band Little Moon is the 2023 Tiny Desk Contest winner.
Mario Alcauter
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Mario Alcauter
The band Little Moon is the 2023 Tiny Desk Contest winner.
Mario Alcauter
Almost 6,000 unbiased artists submitted to this yr’s Tiny Desk Contest with excessive hopes of performing behind the identical Desk that is been graced by artists like Taylor Swift, Usher and Yo-Yo Ma. At the moment, Morning Version introduced the winner: Little Moon, a band from Springville, Utah.
Very like the story behind it, the band’s profitable entry, “Surprise Eye,” has distinct phases. It begins with artist Emma Hardyman quietly plucking a guitar earlier than her voice builds and the six-person band — Emma Hardyman, plus bassist Nathan Hardyman, keys participant Bly Wallentine, harpist Bridget Jackson, drummer Chris Shemwell and electrical guitarist Grace Johnson — erupts with a drive of sound.
“I used to be used to not profitable,” Emma Hardyman tells Ari Shapiro, who she and her husband Nathan Hardyman spoke with hours after right now’s announcement. The Utah band members say they are not used to loads of consideration — and as longtime followers of Tiny Desk (the group has now entered the Contest 4 years in a row) it looks like a complete new realm to be seen by NPR. “It is like when your crush likes you again,” jokes Nathan Hardyman.
Nathan and Emma Hardyman inform Shapiro that they started writing “Surprise Eye” whereas Nathan Hardyman’s mom was in hospice care, and wrote the lyrics quickly after she handed. “‘Surprise Eye’ incorporates the concept of a number of deaths,” Emma shares. “I feel it took the bodily loss of life to assist us notice that loss of life is absolutely taking place on a regular basis — be it previous variations of ourselves, outdated held beliefs, outdated judgements even. And to that extent, we’re at all times grieving as properly, which was additionally eye-opening.”
There was one other main private life occasion that factored into Emma and Nathan writing the track: They have been within the strategy of leaving the Mormon church they have been raised in. “The instruments I had been taught to make use of to make sense of loss of life have been now not as related to me,” Nathan Hardyman shares. “My perception system, which was as soon as very clear about [what happens when you die] — I used to be now not as sure of that. So the lyrics to the track are actually a reminder to me to take a seat with that uncertainty.”
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“Is there a data that’s discovered / not in figuring out?” Emma Hardyman sings within the profitable entry. Nathan Hardyman says that acknowledging that he does not have all of the solutions is “a step towards discovering acceptance and peace with the thriller of life.”
He additionally shares: “My human intuition is to interchange that uncertainty with one thing that does not upset us a lot. However I feel accepting uncertainty, accepting ambiguity, making peace with the thriller of life and loss of life — that may be a extremely therapeutic factor to do.” Maybe there’s one thing paradoxical about taking uncertainty and grief and channeling it into one thing that turned a definitive winner.
The band will carry out its Tiny Desk live performance at NPR’s headquarters quickly earlier than headlining the Tiny Desk Contest On The Street tour. You may get tickets to see Little Moon on tour at NPRPresents.org.
