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The Beaches: Tiny Desk Concert

By Stephen Thompson
Published October 27, 2025 at 4:00 AM CDT

Here's a crucial reminder from The Beaches: It's always summer somewhere.

The Toronto band released one of 2025's most effervescent albums, No Hard Feelings, in late August. Its new-wave-inflected pop-rock jams — about bad love, queer love, bad queer love and a life built around the steadfast refusal to let a good party end — would have made a perfect soundtrack for the defiant joy of Pride Month back in June. But, with darkness falling earlier and earlier, they seemed to know something we didn't: that the world needs these songs now more than ever.

Within NPR Music, there's been a movement afoot to bring The Beaches to the Tiny Desk ever since 2023's "Blame Brett" became one of that year's most irresistible, quotable songs. So it felt appropriate that the group opened with it two years later, in a five-song set drawn from 2023's Blame My Ex and No Hard Feelings. The newest songs really showcase The Beaches' sonic range, as well as the powerhouse vocals of Jordan Miller — particularly in the slow-burn lighter-waver "Lesbian of the Year." (The song was inspired by the coming-out journey of Beaches multi-instrumentalist Leandra Earl, who left behind a gold-star trophy for our shelves.)

No Hard Feelings also sports some of the spikiest, catchiest anthems of 2025, and two of them are showcased to magical effect here: the brooding banger "Can I Call You in the Morning?" and "Last Girls at the Party," which seems destined to close Beaches concerts for as long as the group exists. The song may be an ode to sticking around too long, but as this set shows, this band never wears out its welcome.

SET LIST

  • "Blame Brett"
  • "Can I Call You in the Morning?"
  • "Lesbian of the Year"
  • "Edge of the Earth"
  • "Last Girls at the Party"

MUSICIANS

  • Jordan Miller: vocals, bass
  • Kylie Miller: guitar, background vocals
  • Leandra Earl: guitar, piano, melodica, background vocals
  • Eliza Enman McDaniel: drums

TINY DESK TEAM

  • Producers: Elle Mannion, Stephen Thompson
  • Director: Joshua Bryant
  • Audio Technical Director: Josh Newell
  • Host/Series Producer: Bobby Carter
  • Videographers: Joshua Bryant, Kara Frame, Alanté Serene
  • Video Editor: Kara Frame
  • Audio Engineer: Jay Czys
  • Production Assistant: Dhanika Pineda
  • Photographer: Sofia Seidel
  • Tiny Desk Team: Maia Stern, Ashley Pointer
  • Series Editor: Lars Gotrich
  • Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
  • Executive Director: Sonali Mehta
  • Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson, Robin Hilton

Copyright 2025 NPR
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RockTiny Desk ConcertsMusic
Stephen Thompson
Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
See stories by Stephen Thompson
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