DAWN: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Aug. 10, 2018 | Lars Gotrich -- DAWN has a breathless enthusiasm for shape-shifting pop music. Her discography is a bedazzled collage of heart-bursting rave and extraterrestrial dance-pop — but for her Tiny Desk, the singer and producer strips three songs to just the essentials, illuminating the impeccable songwriting behind the wild combination of sounds. Dawn Richard — who went by D∆WN for a while, and now just prefers DAWN — opens this set with “Waves,“ transforming the trap-laced anthem for “underpaid, underappreciated, undervalued and undermined“ women into a classic girl group song, flanked by two harmonizing vocalists. “If you feelin’ stress up in yo chest / Cause they forgot that you the best / Wave ya money,“ they sing, complete with immediately GIF’able dance moves. It’s positively electric. “Waves“ is followed by two songs from Redemption (my personal favorite album of 2016). Both “Vines (Interlude)“ and, here, a funky revitalization of “Lazarus,“ speak to Richard’s mission to expand o