Marissa Lorusso

Updated at 9:45 a.m. on Friday, July 3.

Sufjan Stevens has announced a new album, The Ascension, out September 25.

British singer Vera Lynn, whose touching ballads helped sustain the spirits of Britons during WWII, died today, according to a statement from the Dame Vera Lynn Children's Charity. She was 103 years old.

The 2020 Tiny Desk Contest closed for entries on April 27. We've seen entries from every state in the country; from big bands and solo artists; and from a huge range of styles and genres — and now, our judges will start to comb through our entries to find a winner. In the meantime, we've been sharing some of favorite entries to this year's Contest.

Tomorrow Perfume Genius, the band led by singer, songwriter and movement artist Mike Hadreas, releases its fifth studio album, Set My Heart on Fire Immediately. With an eclectic palette of Baroque pop, burbling rock and grunge, combined with a dance-focused visual treatment, the album is being greeted as a benchmark in Hadreas' career. NPR Music writers Marissa Lorusso and Cyrena Touros consider its impact, and the importance of Hadreas' career in setting a new standard for exploration of gender, sexuality and identity in rock, in the following exchange.

The 2020 Tiny Desk Contest closed for entries on April 27. We've seen entries from every state in the country; from big bands and solo artists; and from a huge range of styles and genres — and now, our judges will start to comb through our entries to find a winner. In the meantime, we've been sharing some of favorite entries to this year's Contest.

The 2020 Tiny Desk Contest closed for entries on April 27. We've seen entries from every state in the country; from big bands and solo artists; and from a huge range of styles and genres — and now, our judges will start to comb through our entries to find a winner. In the meantime, we've been sharing some of favorite entries to this year's Contest.

Lately, we've been sharing some of favorite entries to the 2020 Tiny Desk Contest, which closed for entries on April 27. We've seen entries from every state in the country; from big bands and solo artists; and from a huge range of styles and genres — and now, our judges will start to comb through our entries to find a winner.

Over the last few weeks, we've been sharing some of the many 2020 Tiny Desk Contest entries that have caught our eyes and ears. If you have a song you'd like us to hear, you have until until 11:59 p.m. ET on April 27 to enter the Contest.

Lately, we've been sharing some of the many 2020 Tiny Desk Contest entries that have caught our eyes and ears.

Over the last few weeks, we've been sharing some of the many 2020 Tiny Desk Contest entries that have caught our eyes and ears. We recently extended our deadline for entries: You now have until until 11:59 p.m. ET on April 27 to enter the Contest.

When the Tiny Desk Contest team is looking through entry videos, we're often impressed by where artists take us. This year, for example, we've already seen a brass band performing in a forest (using a redwood stump as a desk), a small orchestra stuffed into an office space and a lot of plants.

Throughout the next few months, we'll be sharing some of the many 2020 Tiny Desk Contest entries that have caught our eyes and ears. There's still time to enter: We're accepting videos until 11:59 p.m. ET on March 30. You can watch a playlist of all the entries we've featured on the blog on YouTube.

For the past six years, NPR Music has held an annual competition to find the best undiscovered artist to come play at Bob Boilen's desk and tour the country with NPR Music. We call it the Tiny Desk Contest. Our five winners submitted videos that stopped us in our tracks and have gone on to do great things, like touring the world and winning Grammy awards. We've included their winning songs, plus other tracks of theirs that we love, on this playlist.

Throughout the next few months, we'll be sharing some of the many 2020 Tiny Desk Contest entries that have caught our eyes and ears. You can enter the Contest until 11:59 p.m. ET on March 30. You can watch a playlist of all the entries we've featured on the blog on YouTube.

Starting today, NPR Music is accepting entries to the 2020 Tiny Desk Contest. You can now submit your video via our website. We'll be accepting entries through March 30 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• To be eligible, you must be at least 18 years of age and a resident of the United States. You can't currently have a record deal.

Empathy persists throughout the music of Frances Quinlan. The Philadelphia-based songwriter finds the humanity at the center of any story: some from her own life; some from historical figures, or something a friend told her, or a podcast she heard. It hardly matters if you can trace the exact narrative contours; you still end up with a powerful sense of what it feels like to exist inside of those experiences.

Before she wrote Silver Tongue, out later this month, Torres' Mackenzie Scott stopped writing music altogether. After releasing three albums of searing, searching guitar rock, Scott says she needed to reassess. It's a "delusional pursuit," as she calls it, to try to make a living as a musician right now. Did she even still want to do it? What was even worth writing about?

Adrianne Lenker is the guitarist and singer for the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based rock band Big Thief. Cecilia Bartoli is the Italian opera singer who thrives on neglected repertoire from the 18th century. The two women might seem like strange bedfellows, but they come together in our series titled "highly specific superlatives," a kind of drilling down to some of the finest and most precise moments in the arts in 2019.

For the past decade, Frances Quinlan has built a reputation as an expertly narrative songwriter and a peerless singer in the indie-rock world with her band, Hop Along.