New Zealand / In Case You Missed It

The Beths record stripped back acoustic set for famous NPR Tiny Desk Concert

08:46 am on 2 April 2023

New Zealand indie rock band The Beths have performed on American media organisation NPR's famous Tiny Desk video concert series.

In the series, musicians play stripped-back acoustic sets in front of NPR staff from behind a desk at its offices earlier this week.

Performers include some of the industry's biggest names, and some rack up tens of millions of views on YouTube.

"It's incredibly kind of intimate and a bit vulnerable" - Liz Stokes

The Beths vocalist and guitarist, Liz Stokes, said it was a once-in-a-career opportunity.

"It was wild, we heard about it a few months ago and started rehearsing for it pretty intensely."

The concert series revolved around playing in an office and had a mix of up-and-coming bands and then huge acts like Adele or Taylor Swift, she said.

"So you play during the lunch hour in the NPR office and the staff come and watch you if they want to I guess.

"But the crucial thing is that it's filmed and it's filmed and recorded in a way that's like, there's no monitoring."

Generally The Beths are an electrified four piece and the lack of monitoring and amplification meant changing things for an acoustic set, Stokes said.

"Because we're normally a loud band it's like we had to change quite a lot to make sure that the songs kind of worked at that kind of volume and at that level, yeah so we practised a bunch of our songs and tried to figure out which were working the best and then chose four."

It was nerve wracking and a bit scary watching the video given the setting, she said.

"It's incredibly kind of intimate and a bit vulnerable as well given there's like, I don't know there's no reverb or effects on your vocals or you can't hide behind anything - so yeah I'm glad it turned out all right."

It was good to know that The Beths songs still worked if they were stripped back as the band spent a lot of time recording and arranging their songs, she said.

Later this year, the Beths will tour the United States, including a show at the iconic Hollywood Bowl.