While artists still aren’t playing Tiny Desk shows behind *the* actual tiny desk at NPR’s Washington DC offices, the pandemic pivot of the “At Home” Tiny Desk Concert variety is still pretty awesome. Acts from Little Simz to Dinosaur Jr. to Ed Sheeran are keeping the flow going strong, and the latest installment comes from Wet Leg, the buzzy British post-punk group that just announced their debut album this week.
Coming straight outta their hometown Isle Of Wight (one of the British Isles along the English Channel), Wet Leg’s performance is a dispatch from The Ventnor Exchange, a creative hub, venue, bar, and record shop. In the tightly packed space, the band course through all four of the singles that they’ve released so far. Bassist Ellis Durand and guitar/synths player Josh Mobaraki are sitting comfortably on the ground as lead singer Rhian Teasdale is a towering figure in the front of the frame. Lead guitarist Hester Chambers is chillin’ in the cuts, totally dominating on opening tracks “Chaise Lounge” and “Too Late Now.” It’s a simple recording that flashes into a sepia tone-soaked video at times.
“Everybody hold on to your buttholes,” Teasdale jokes before they jump into a song, a rare crack in their typically dead-panned overall disposition. This performance might be the best primer yet on the band who is poised to be the next big thing in indie.
Watch Wet Leg’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Even if the aspiring artist in your life already has all the gear they need, there are still some goodies and novelties that will surely be appreciated. So, we’ve rounded up some of our favorites and the list includes things like a terrific DIY recording kit, accessories that bring convenience to the life of a nomadic artist, and a few fun things that are are more low-key but surprisingly useful. So, if you’re looking for inspiration ahead of the end-of-year holidays, keep reading.
Focusrite Scarlett Solo Studio Pack
Guitar Center
If there’s an aspiring artist in your life who has the talent to create amazing music but doesn’t have the resources to make some decent-sounding recordings, this kit could be a perfect start for them. There’s a large diaphragm condenser mic to capture their performance, a pair of headphones so they can really hear what they’re doing, and a USB audio interface to manage all the inputs and outputs. Pair this with a laptop that has even a simple digital audio workstation program and your up-and-comer has a chance to create something great.
That previous kit is great, but if you’re looking for something more compact or your budget is a bit tighter, this little Fender device could be a perfect alternative. What we have here is a guitar headphone amplifier and a recording interface that can be used to record over USB, stream Bluetooth audio to make it easy to play along to a backing track, and mess with amp, effect, and EQ settings. That’s quite a bit considering it all comes in a pocket-sized package.
Buy a guitar and it’ll usually come with some dinky strap that is good enough, but if you want to treat yourself with something more reliable, getting something of a higher quality is a justifiable expense. Fender has a great model that’s made with the same leather they use in baseball gloves, perhaps the piece of sporting gear most famous for lasting for years. Between the heavy-duty contrast stitching and the strap’s adjustability, you can’t go wrong here.
Similar story here: Guitars can come with a case, but it’s usually flimsy and should really be considered a temporary solution. If you want something less ephemeral, this gig bag is a fine way to protect and transport your acoustic six-string. It has 10.5 mm padding throughout, a weather-resistant exterior, and a bottom rubber guard, so this case offers fantastic protection whether you’re out and about or just storing your guitar at home.
Getting to play music on stage on a regular basis is the dream for a lot of performers, but the nightmare that often comes later on is hearing loss. Fortunately, that is easily preventable with a simple-but-effective pair of ear plugs. This pair from Hearos promises to deliver “flat attenuation,” which allows you to “hear the music just as it was intended, but with the elimination of up to 12 decibels of potentially damaging noise.” If you find yourself in an overly loud environment, music-related or not, these are a must-have.
If you’re shopping for somebody who already has all the gear they can handle, a fun novelty isn’t a bad idea for a stocking-stuffer. These audio jack key-holders are better than most novelties in that they actually serve a useful purpose, both by keeping keys organized and letting guests in your home know in a fun way where your passion is.
Cheap microphones can get the job done in a pinch, especially if you’ve adopted a DIY aesthetic. For those who want something cleaner and more professional-sounding, though, something like this Shure mic, which has nearly 300 5-star ratings on Guitar Center’s website, is sure to be an upgrade. This model boasts “internal ‘air suspension’ shock isolation” and a built-in pop filter, getting rid of audio distractions and letting whatever it is you’re recording shine, whether it’s music, podcasts, or whatever you can think of.
There’s some quality recording equipment on this list, but fancy gear can only do so much of the acoustics of the room you’re playing in are trash. This set of acoustic panels take care of that issue really quickly, as they can cover your walls and take care of errant reverb and other acoustic issues for relatively cheap. Considering how drastically acoustic panels can improve the quality of your recordings, these are beyond a worthwhile pick-up.
A sturdy stool is a versatile tool for pretty much everybody in the band and PDP makes a great one for under $100. This one ought to come through when it counts, too, thanks to features like its double-braced legs and slip-resistant feet. For just a few bucks, this is a rock-solid gift that will see a bunch of use and hold up for years to come.
Orange Amplifiers Crush Mini 3W 1×4 Guitar Combo Amp
Guitar Center
A quality primary amp is an essential investment, but having a smaller secondary one is an excellent accessory to keep handy, too. This one is a mini version of the classic Orange amp, which makes it perfect for situations when portability and convenience are paramount, whether you’re busking on the street, practicing on the road, or working on your next great musical idea in your bedroom.
The world was not shocked to learn today that Donald Trump waited to reveal that he tested positive for COVID-19 after until after his debate with Joe Biden. The former-president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, writes in his new book that on September 26, 2020, three days before the debate, a White House doctor alerted Trump about the diagnosis. His response rhymed with, “Oh spit, you’ve gotta be trucking lidding me.”
The positive test was done with an “old model kit,” so Trump was tested again and it came back negative. “Meadows says Trump took that call as ‘full permission to press on as if nothing had happened.’ His chief of staff, however, ‘instructed everyone in his immediate circle to treat him as if he was positive’ throughout the trip,” the Guardian reports. Trump has since denied the claim, calling it [groan] “Fake News” in a statement.
During a press conference on Wednesday, Joe Biden was asked for his thoughts on Trump putting him, a then-77-year-old who hadn’t been vaccinated yet, at risk by not canceling the debate while he secretly had COVID. The president replied, “I don’t think about the former president.” He then walked off stage to complete the mic drop moment.
President Biden is asked if he thinks Trump’s positive test before the first presidential debate put him at risk.
It’s not unusual for the best moments during an Inside the NBA broadcast to have nothing to do with basketball. That was the case on Tuesday evening, as the quartet were split in half and went head-to-head in the whisper challenge. This comes on the heels of a video involving a pair of Orlando Magic players, Cole Anthony and Mo Bamba, playing it and doing horrifically.
As you can see, real bad. Bamba tried but Anthony really struggled reading lips, which, it’s not easy so that is totally fine. Having said that, everyone on the Inside crew — which was broken up into a team of Shaquille O’Neal and Ernie Johnson going against Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith — is quite good at this. As a result, we had a pretty competitive game, with Ernie and Kenny reading out the clues to Shaq and Chuck. There were lists of 10 phrases and 60 seconds on the clock, here’s how it went:
A whole lot of credit goes to Ernie, who stayed laser-focused on reading out his messages while Kenny took a little time to celebrate in between these, thereby costing his team valuable time. Of course, it did not help that there was no way on God’s green earth that Chuck was going to say the phrase “Roll Tide,” so his team had something of a ceiling on how well they could do the entire time. Anyway, congrats to the winners.
While discussing Dr. Oz getting in bed with Republicans to run for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, the ladies of The View tried to wrap their heads around what happened to their fellow daytime brethren, who they personally know as a nice person. Naturally, Joy Behar got in the first jab by quipping that Dr. Oz has “gone over to the dark side” after watching him say his politics “matches” that of Sean Hannity. However, Behar was quick to point Dr. Oz has always been lovely to her.
“I’ve been to his house for dinner,” Behar said. “Somebody that we know was having a medical issue, I picked up the phone, I asked him ‘What should we do?’ He told you exactly who to call. He’s very, very, personally, a doll.
But despite his nice personality, Sunny Hostin couldn’t get past Oz pushing for schools to reopen in the early days of the pandemic and even going so far as to say that the move “may only cost us 2-3% in terms of total mortality.” That is 2-3% too many dead kids for Whoopi Goldberg, who absolutely unloaded on Oz once she got a chance to speak.
DR. OZ JOINS PENNSYLVANIA SENATE RACE: Following weeks of speculation, Dr. Mehmet Oz officially declared his candidacy for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat – the co-hosts react. https://t.co/3RQsOvYXs5pic.twitter.com/ZbqPmFFRpd
“Listen, you either get that this is about other people’s health — this is not whether you like the idea of a mandate, or getting a shot. That has nothing to do with it,” Whoopi said. “Kids going back to school deserve to be safe and if you, as a doctor, and a physician, can’t see that, then you’re not somebody I want to vote for, no matter how much I like you!”
Whoopi didn’t stop there. She also blasted Oz for his odd remarks about “elites with yards” telling people to stay inside during the pandemic.
“Talkin’ about elites and who is an elite,” Whoopi said. “Dude, we live in a similar area! I got a yard. I didn’t tell people not to come, I told people to come walk in the yard, and I would stay in the house. What did you do?”
If you’ve been on social media today, you’re probably well aware that Spotify unveiled the annual Spotify Wrapped feature today, where music fans see lists of the songs, artists, genres, and more that they most engaged with on the streaming platform over the past year. While it’s an opportunity for fans to look back on 2021, it’s also a neat chance for artists to see just how music their work was appreciated. So, as Wrapped started making the rounds today, artists shared their reactions.
Bad Bunny’s reaction wasn’t on social media, but in real life. As he was told in-person that he was the year’s most-streamed artist worldwide, he was all smiles. He was asked what fans can look forward to in 2022 and he said, “The same! I don’t go into it to be the No. 1 most streamed artist. I just make music. I just enjoy my ‘work.’ I hope 2022 is going to be great.”
millions of you opened up the floodgates of your hearts to my art this year. This year I learnt to embrace myself, my sensitivities, my inner fractures, my arms, my instinctive softness – the vision remains the same – to stay true. Thank you for embracing me as I am@Spotifypic.twitter.com/s0T7NZ0XY3
Our fans are amazing! Thank you for all of the streams / shares / playlists and helping us get our music around the world! How about some more new music in 2022?! @spotifypic.twitter.com/D8PeMQHg2s
Thanks to all 23.2 million of you listening across 174 countries on @SpotifyUK this year. This is wild. We’re at https://t.co/xX9kYDv5h2 if you’ve not found us there yet.
The college football world has seen a pretty major shake-up in recent days thanks to a pair of head coaches bolting from one blue blood job for another. Now-former Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley reckoned his time in Norman had run its course and decided to take the USC job, and one day later, longtime Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly took over LSU’s head coaching vacancy now that Ed Orgeron is no longer in charge.
While the Riley news came out of left field, Kelly heading down to Baton Rouge was arguably an even bigger surprise, thanks in part to the fact that the Fighting Irish have a legitimate chance of making the College Football Playoff depending on how things shake out during the various conference championship games this upcoming weekend. Shortly after news of his decision hit the Twitterverse on Monday, a message Kelly sent to the team regarding a 7 a.m. meeting where he’d explain himself.
Shortly after Matt Fortuna and Pete Sampson of The Athletic published the transcript of his message to the team in their tell-all in the aftermath of his departure, video surfaced of Kelly’s goodbye to the team. Here’s the entire thing:
FOOTAGE: Brian Kelly’s 4-minute goodbye address to the Notre Dame football team, Part 1: pic.twitter.com/Yt8qMrJYu1
According to The Athletic, Kelly did not take any questions from the team, and after he said goodbye, “he walked out of the door to his right.” Notre Dame was sixth in the most recent College Football Playoff rankings that were released on Tuesday evening, and on Wednesday, Kelly had his introductory press conference at LSU.
After having her book pulled from publishers and an entire movie deal scrapped, Alice Sebold — the author behind bestselling books The Lovely Bones and Lucky — has apologized to the man she falsely accused of being her rapist 40 years ago. Sebold first shared the apology with the Associated Press before later publishing it on Medium, writing she was “truly sorry” to Anthony Broadwater Jr., the man who served 16 years behind bars following the wrongful conviction, and knows “no apology can change what happened to you and never will.”
“I want to say that I am truly sorry to Anthony Broadwater and I deeply regret what you have been through,” Sebold wrote. “I am sorry most of all for the fact that the life you could have led was unjustly robbed from you, and I know that no apology can change what happened to you and never will. Of the many things I wish for you, I hope most of all that you and your family will be granted the time and privacy to heal.”
This all comes a week after a New York state judge overturned Broadwater’s conviction of first-degree rape, which Sebold wrote about in her 1999 memoir Lucky. In the book, Sebold describes the moment she located and falsely accused Broadwater with striking detail, writing:
“He was smiling as he approached. He recognized me. It was a stroll in the park to him; he had met an acquaintance on the street. ‘Hey, girl,’ he said. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ I looked directly at him. Knew his face had been the face over me in the tunnel.”
However, 40 years later, we now know Sebold was tragically incorrect in her accusation.
Prior to this shocking revelation, Lucky was in the process of being turned into a feature film starring You‘sVictoria Pedretti. However, in the midst of production an executive producer on the project began to doubt Broadwater’s guilt, eventually exiting the film and hiring a private investigator to look into the case.
Ultimately, the investigator and new defense attorney discovered Broadwater had been convicted on “insufficient and now-discredited forms of evidence” and presented that argument to the court, which wholly agreed with them. Following the trial, District Attorney William Fitzpatrick reportedly told the court “I’m not going to sully these proceedings by saying, ‘I’m sorry. That doesn’t cut it. This should never have happened,” a sentiment echoed by Sebold in her apology.
“40 years ago, as a traumatized 18-year-old rape victim, I chose to put my faith in the American legal system. My goal in 1982 was justice — not to perpetuate injustice. And certainly not to forever, and irreparably, alter a young man’s life by the very crime that had altered mine,” Sebold said. “I am grateful that Mr. Broadwater has finally been vindicated, but the fact remains that 40 years ago, he became another young Black man brutalized by our flawed legal system. I will forever be sorry for what was done to him.”
As for Broadwater, after 40 years of maintaining his innocence — which ultimately led him to be denied parole several times while imprisoned — he says he has been “crying tears of joy and relief.” Just last week, Broadwater told the New York Times he was hopeful there would be an apology and can “sympathize with her,” but ultimately “she was wrong.”
Miley Cyrus has achieve a lot in her career. After acting on Disney Channel at age 12, Cyrus went on to have a wildly successful music career. She’s won countless awards for her music and even has more Billboard 200 chart top-five entries than any other female musician. But she now has made another achievement just barely before she was no longer eligible for it — Cyrus was named on Forbes‘ 30 Under 30 list at age 29.
Forbes just unveiled their full 30 Under 30 list, which included musicians like Jack Harlow, Olivia Rodrigo, Remi Wolf, Willow, Tinashe, and Don Toliver. Not only was Cyrus a part of the list, but she was also invited to serve as a judge for selecting the honorees.
Reacting to her placement on the 30 Under 30 list after just turning 29, Cyrus expressed gratitude to her fans:
“Songwriting is the greatest joy that I have in my life. It’s my favorite element of what I do. Taking it in and being grateful every day for the fact that I write songs for a living because a lot of people write songs and it doesn’t get to be what keeps their lights on and for me to be able to be one of those people, I never forget how lucky I am. With anything, distance makes the heart grow fonder so having that distance from my fans for the longest I’ve ever had since I was 12 years old, almost two years separated from me and my audience, the pandemic kind of reignited and just lit that spark again for me, the gratitude that I have to be a live musician, first.”
R&B wunderkind Khalid has returned with the video for his new, mellow jam as he prepares to release a mixtape to hold fans over until his next album. After announcing that Scenic Drive would drop this Friday, December 3, the 23-year-old has released the video for “Present,” which he originally released toward the end of October.
Rather than plotting out a high-concept video, Khalid instead chose to have fun in the clip for “Present,” offering a laid-back smoke session with a troupe of beautiful, well-dressed dancers. The initial staging presents Khalid and his dancers as works of art, like classical statues before they come alive to run through joyful choreography and blow smoke in the air. Their costuming suggests that the baggy look favored by gen Z remains firmly in fashion, with quilted coats, tech vests, and billowy sweatpants aplenty adorning them as they grin their way through their uptempo dances.
Fans expecting Khalid’s new music to harken back to his impressive and beloved debut American Teen might be disappointed, though. In October, he explained why his music necessarily evolved to suit his life circumstances, telling a curious fan on Twitter, “I’m a whole 23 almost 24 years old, American Teen is not happening again.”
Watch Khalid’s “Present” video above.
Scenic Drive is out 12/3 on Right Hand Music Group/RCA Records. You can pre-save it here.
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(@LilNasX) 
wow y’all. Thank you so much for listening. I am so honored. Cheers to another great year! 
Thanks to all 23.2 million of you listening across 174 countries on 
WORLDWIDE!
Her music has been streamed to over 177 countries this year and streamed 452.5M times! Muchas Gracias! 
