Bob Boilen

I'm all alone in the studio.

I had so many new songs to share; I didn't want to split the show with a co-host.

To be clear, sad songs make up the majority of this week's All Songs Considered. So, if you have a love for the type of music you might hear from Julien Baker or Japanese Breakfast, we have five new artists to add to your playlist, including a 19-year-old singer from Belgium who goes by the name Asia; The artist known as Dolly Valentine asks, "Do you know where you want to go?" And there are more beautiful but crushing tunes brought to you by "the dream team" (NPR's Lyndsey McKenna and Marissa Lorusso).

Most cities tend to have a voice, but few quite as loud or interesting as Seattle's. This is a city that gave us Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana and Pearl Jam but also the softer, more introspective sounds of Fleet Foxes, The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie.

Your picks for the best new artists of 2019 (so far) include a lot of bands and musicians we've been following for a while – Maggie Rogers, Stella Donnelly, Nilüfer Yanya and Jade Bird have all been releasing music for several years – but they didn't drop an official full-length debut until this year.

It's the podcast... as a playlist! For nearly two decades, All Songs Considered has treated music discovery as a mission, to share in the joy of new artists and old favorites. Updated weekly with songs featured on the show.

Stream: Spotify, Apple Music.

Bob Boilen is the creator of NPR Music's All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts. This is a running list of what he's listening to right now, updated weekly. Most of the songs are recent, but occasionally he will toss in a few older tunes that pop into his head or feel relevant.

The artists who attract me the most are those who are on the rise — artists whose popularity is mostly a small, dedicated circle of fans but growing. That's certainly true of the Shreveport band Seratones. They're putting out their second album later this summer and, from the sound of this potent new title track "Power," it's clear they'll find a bigger fanbase.

Jessi Whitten of Colorado Public Radio's Open Air co-hosts this week's All Songs Considered and turns me on to the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, the funnest band name of the year, with music all the way from Perth, Australia to match. All of Jessi's picks are laced with fun, including French Vanilla's new-wave, early-'80s sound, reminiscent of the British punk band X-Ray Spex. She also brings us music from Colorado by Kiltro, a band with one foot in Colorado and another in Chile.

Rhye has built its reputation on crooning, soft-focus love ballads. But on the band's latest release, Spirit, singer Mike Milosh offers something unexpected: a set of downcast, solo piano instrumentals. On this week's All Songs Considered we hear the stark and beautifully gloomy cut "Malibu Nights."

On this edition of All Songs Considered, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood joins us to talk about two of his classical compositions we've just premiered on our Tiny Desk series.

This year, I was blown away by the Tiny Desk Contest entries I saw. We received over 6,000 entries from all across the country. We saw tiny desks up on rooftops and down on a subway platform; tucked into treetops, pickup trucks and laundromats. We heard songs about the situations that make life difficult and the people that make life worth living.

On this Guest DJ edition of All Songs Considered Joe Talbot, frontman for the British punk group IDLES, talks about the band's latest album, Joy as an Act of Resistance, how Van Morrison's Astral Weeks changed his life and his tips for how to make the long drive across Kansas while on tour.

IDLES is a band that's both fierce and compassionate. It's also one of the best live rock groups I've ever seen — the kind that creates mosh pits and community with noise and humanity.

This week's episode of All Songs Considered is a show of contrasts — cotton-candy pop one moment (from mxmtoon), raging punk sung in Farsi the next (from Khiis) — and then calming, instrumental, prog rock courtesy The Quiet Temple. For All Songs Considered's nearly 20 years, we've tried to live up to our namesake and on this show, we consider more drastic ends of the song spectrum than we have in recent memory.

Have you ever had Persian cotton candy? It looks like Muppet hair and tastes like pistachio — well, at least the one we ate in the studio.

Note: NPR's First Listen audio comes down after the album is released. However, you can still listen with the Spotify and Apple playlists at the bottom of the page.