Vote For Your Favorite D.C. Tiny Desk Contest Video

Update, March 7: We’re extending the voting deadline. Pick your favorite D.C. Tiny Desk Video until 3 p.m. March 7.

Update, March 3: NPR has announced the national winner of the Tiny Desk Contest.

While NPR prepares to announce the national winner of the 2016 Tiny Desk Contest, I’ve been watching every video submitted by musicians in the Washington, D.C., region. It’s been an enormous job, and a surprising one.

That’s because this year’s crop of local submissions are more diverse than those I saw last year, when NPR first held the national contest. D.C. artists brought more hip-hop, electronic, R&B and all-around strange stuff, spicing up a competition dominated by acoustic-guitar strummers. There were also more local videos this time — around 160, up from last year’s 130.

But while I have my favorites, I’m not going to name what I consider the very best, like I did last year with Kokayi’s awesome Tiny Desk Contest video. I am going to leave that to you, Bandwidth readers.

Here’s the deal. After watching all 160 videos, I picked 10 “semifinalists” and arrayed those in a short playlist. Then I made a gigantic playlist of every single D.C.-area video submitted to the Tiny Desk Contest. So when you vote for your favorite — via our handy survey, below — you can vote for one of my “semifinalists,” or write in your favorite. Because we live in a democracy.

NPR plans to announce the winner of the national contest on Thursday. Fingers crossed the victor hails from D.C. But if we don’t best the entire country, let’s at least crown one of our own.

Voting for Bandwidth’s contest will close 8 p.m. Sunday, March 6. If we get enough votes, we will announce the fan favorite the week of March 7. 

The Top 10 best D.C.-area Tiny Desk Contest videos, according to WAMU 88.5’s Bandwidth:

Every D.C.-area video submitted to the Tiny Desk Contest, according to NPR data:

Top image: A still from Near Northeast’s submission to NPR’s 2016 Tiny Desk Contest