for MPR Music. Welcome to the Tiny Desk Contest Top shelf. I'm Bob Boylin. We started this contest

to find great new talent from all around the country. And the winner of this contest that we've

started is going to get to play a Tiny Desk concert. And that's a concert at NPR behind my desk.

And we've done so many amazing concerts in the Tiny Desk Contest series. And we started this

series called Top Shelf where our judges take the favorite entries that we've seen out of the

thousands that we get. And then they help whittle them down. And we're going to play some of the

ones our favorite judges choices for this year amongst the thousands as we head towards picking a

winner for the Tiny Desk Contest. And that'll happen sometime in September. Other judges will

join us week after week over the course of the summer. Next week is Phoebe Bridgers.

Toby and Wigway is August 5th. John Morrison is August 19th. Julie Height. And then Linda Diaz

last year's Tiny Desk Contest winner kicking off today's Tiny Desk contest. And the Tiny Desk Top

shelf is a producer, partner in crime, contest judge Bobby Carter. Oh my gosh. You know we see each

each other every day like this. And I haven't seen you in the room behind the desk in a year and a

half. I missed the heck out of you. I really do. I miss you too, man. What a difference a year makes.

I who would have thought that we would still be here doing this. But the good thing is that

we're still doing this right? We crowned a winner last year. Yeah. I'm excited to do this again.

This is fun. Man, we get to chop it up about some of my favorite. I'm going to say some of my

favorites because it was really tough. I'll just say, you know, real quickly. This is my second year

as a judge, one of the judges. And it's a tale of two completely different years for me.

If I'm being honest, Linda was the front one for me very last year. Linda Diaz,

our 2021, she was a front runner for me early on last year. But this year, it's tough.

Very, very tough. I don't know who my absolute favorite is. And it's going to be really tough

...