Anthony Pirog Trio – Composition for You, You and Me
Milan Credle – The Conflict (Instrumental)
Rod Hamilton – Treppe 2 & 1
The El Mansouris – Walden
Nerftoss – Low/Highway
Rival Skies – Destroyer
small craft – last breath
Taiwo Heard – Eternal Night
Miter – Yr Gold
Ben Dransfield – Nostalgia
Roger Aldridge – Sleepy Creek Samba
Georgie James – Places (Instrumental)
Jordan Clawson – Good to Better
Abu Jibran – Bring Back Hippy Jesus
Aaron Tinjum and the Tangents – Roving Instrumental / Interlude #1
Sun Committee – Lake Effect
Matt Rippetoe – Ladybugs
Snail Mail – Thinning
Ronny Smith – Valentine
Mud Rey – Never Satisfied

Anthony Pirog Trio – Composition for You, You and Me
Milan Credle – The Conflict (Instrumental)
Rod Hamilton – Treppe 2 & 1
The El Mansouris – Walden
Nerftoss – Low/Highway
Rival Skies – Destroyer
small craft – last breath
Taiwo Heard – Eternal Night
Miter – Yr Gold
Ben Dransfield – Nostalgia
Roger Aldridge – Sleepy Creek Samba
Georgie James – Places (Instrumental)
Jordan Clawson – Good to Better
Abu Jibran – Bring Back Hippy Jesus
Aaron Tinjum and the Tangents – Roving Instrumental / Interlude #1
Sun Committee – Lake Effect
Matt Rippetoe – Ladybugs
Snail Mail – Thinning
Ronny Smith – Valentine
Mud Rey – Never Satisfied

Today NPR announced the second edition of its Tiny Desk Contest, a national competition that gives unsigned musicians a shot at playing the media company’s popular Tiny Desk concert series at NPR’s D.C. headquarters.

NPR’s inaugural contest yielded nearly 6,000 videos from across the country. In February judges crowned the winner, California blues musician Fantastic Negrito, and the public-radio bump helped push him to the top of iTunes’ blues charts, according to NPR.

The contest also elicited numerous promising videos from D.C. artists, including a standout from Deanwood hip-hop artist Kokayi.

Want to get in on the Tiny Desk action? Musicians can submit original videos from Jan. 12 to Feb. 2, 2016 via the contest’s official website. Take note of the rules, which prohibit videos from artists under 21 years old and outside the U.S., among other restrictions. Entrants must also perform at a desk. (Oh, you thought they were kidding?)

The contest winner scores a four-stop national tour, including an appearance on NPR’s Ask Me Another and gigs at breweries owned by sponsor Lagunitas Brewing Company.

But even if you don’t win, NPR still may feature your video on its Tiny Desk Contest Tumblr — and all submissions from the D.C. region will be considered by WAMU’s Bandwidth for our own local contest. (Go-go and bounce beat bands, we especially want to hear from you!)

So have you started making your Tiny Desk video yet? Find a desk and get crankin’, D.C.

Top photo: A screenshot from The El Mansouris’ submission to NPR’s first Tiny Desk Contest. WAMU 88.5 is the NPR affiliate in Washington, D.C.

The party decor doesn’t feel out of place. This is a celebration. It’s the first anniversary of Babe City Records, a D.C.-based record and cassette label that captures the new sound of the city’s indie-rock scene — and the show is nearly sold out.

Formerly associated with Chimes Records, Babe City was spearheaded by musicians and fans who wanted to carve out a place for themselves in independent music. Now the label is on a mission to help other local bands do the same.

The label’s Jon Weiss, 24, and Peter Lillis, 28, are also musicians: They both appeared onstage during the anniversary show, handling guitar in Jules Hale’s band Den-Mate. (Weiss also sings in Babe City group The Sea Life.) Weiss and Lillis play major roles behind the scenes, too: They quite literally live Babe City, which shares its name with their group house and DIY venue in D.C.’s Dupont Circle neighborhood. The guys moved into the house in August 2014 and started hosting shows the following month.

Co-founded by Erik Cativo (aka Erik Strander) and Weiss, Babe City is now operated by a small group of friends. Cativo and Weiss handle key roles behind the scenes, including production and booking, respectively. Lillis serves as the label’s publicity guru. More help comes from Kevin Sottek, a member of Babe City signees Witch Coast, who’s the label’s art director; Jen Pape, who recently joined as a project manager; and Michael Andrade — an occasional Bandwidth contributor — who’s Babe City’s official photographer.

“We’re all nerds about something,” Lillis says. “Everyone comes into it with their own background and passion and it fills out all the space in between.”

Babe City likes to be inclusive. For the 9:30 Club gig, the label roped in D.C. bands The Max Levine Ensemble and The El Mansouris, poppy rock ensembles with no official tie to the label. With the slogan “everyone’s a babe at Babe City,” the imprint doesn’t want to be thought of as male-oriented or sexist (though the anniversary gig’s lineup was heavily male).

Weiss says David Combs, the longtime leader of The Max Levine Ensemble (and also a Bandwidth contributor), was his first musical role model when he first started to probe the D.C. music scene at age 16. “Having him on this show was awesome,” says Weiss, a Rockville native who’s only eight years younger than Combs.

In an indie-rock scene as transient as D.C.’s, it doesn’t take long for scenesters to become elder statesmen. Weiss has been involved with The Sea Life for eight years, and he thought his experience could be helpful to rising bands like Young Rapids. The musician says his desire to support other local groups was a major impetus behind Babe City’s creation.

“When you have this album that you’re proud of and you can’t put it out, or you don’t know how to put it out, or you don’t have direction for it,” Weiss says, “it’s very defeating.”

Lillis agrees. He says Babe City is here to help.

“Bands can get bogged down in the non-music stuff from recording, to booking shows, even finding a place to practice,” Lillis says. “There are so many logistics that can be a detriment to bands. We want to let them be the musicians, and we’ll get the rest of it done for them.”

Now Babe City wants to take its mission a step further. They want to work on getting their music licensed for media, sign more out-of-state bands and grow into a national — as well as local — label. And they’d like to expand into vinyl.

“[Vinyl] is our favorite format,” Weiss says. “We don’t want to be just a cassette label. Most of the labels we look up to are primarily vinyl. To be viewed by them as peers would be an awesome goal for us.”

But while the 9:30 Club gig felt like a party, both Weiss and Lillis say the work has just begun.

“We’re happy and excited, but we’re not patting ourselves on the back,” Weiss says. “We’re not ready to do that yet. We want to just use it as motivation and validation to work harder.”

Second photo: The Sea Life at 9:30 Club, by Michael Andrade

The original version of this post contained errors and imprecise language. Due to a reporting error, it incorrectly identified Peter Lillis, who works on the label, as a co-founder. (Jon Weiss and Erik Cativo are co-founders.) Second, due to an editing error, we described Babe City as a cassette label, but that’s not entirely accurate: It has released music both on vinyl and cassette. Third, Babe City is better described as an affiliate — not a direct descendant — of Chimes Records. Finally, we first referred to Young Rapids as “younger” than The Sea Life, but that wasn’t the best word choice. We meant the band has existed for less time. The language has been corrected.

NPR received more than 5,000 eligible submissions to the national competition, which gives musicians a shot at performing a live concert at the radio network’s headquarters in D.C. But fewer than 60 submissions came from inside D.C.’s borders.

NPR’s data shows that more than half of entrants from this region identified as Marylanders or Virginians, many of them far outside the beltway in places like Bluemont and Clarksburg. And if you watch all 130 local submissions like I did, you’ll find that many went the coffee-shop route: a solo performance, usually involving an acoustic guitar and a tender song.

But those who took another path made a big impression. That’s why — if you asked me to judge a regional Tiny Desk competition — I’d hand the prize to D.C. hip-hop artist Kokayi.

The established producer, vocalist and rapper from Deanwood has been nominated for a Grammy. He was a member of ’90s-’00s hip-hop ensemble Opus Akoben, who had a short stint on a major label. He’s prolific — last year he challenged himself to release a new track every day — and he’s taken hip-hop to Senegal with the grant-funded DC2DK project. So it’s no surprise that Kokayi brought his A game to his Tiny Desk submission.

On a song called “The Lick,” Kokayi sings, speed-rhymes, plays the keys, chair-dances and punctuates his verses with goofy faces. NPR’s official Tiny Desk Contest rules say that stage presence and charisma make up 20 percent of the judges’ criteria. Kokayi nailed that category, all while sitting down.

As for the rest of the field, I’m finding it tough to pick a clear runner-up, so how about I just name a bunch? D.C.’s M.H. & His Orchestra, Stranger in the Alps and Virginia’s The Plank Stompers turned in dynamic performances — and brand-new local band The El-Mansouris made a strong impression for a group that hasn’t even played its first show yet (see their debut Feb. 26 at Transformer).

I also enjoyed the videos from Reston’s Space Waste (they start the song by chanting “Yoko! Ono!”), Takoma Park guitarist Angie Head, Silver Spring smooth-pop trio The Walking Sticks and D.C.’s Be Steadwell, Sara Curtin, The Sea Life, Boon and The Highballers.

Watch Kokayi’s video plus 12 handpicked runner-ups in this playlist, below. NPR announces the national Tiny Desk contest winner on Feb. 12.

Want to share this playlist? Find an embed code on YouTube.