The Foo Fighters recently crammed into cozy New York/New Jersey clubs to warm up for the release of their ferocious new album, Your Favorite Toy. But even those dramatic underplays for the stadium-rocking band were mega compared to the sight of the six-member rock juggernaut squeezing behind the titular workspace for their just-released NPR Tiny Desk show.
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“It’s an honor to be here,” singer/guitarist Dave Grohl said after the group ripped through the new album shredder “Spit Shine” as if they were playing to 50,000-plus. “I’ve watched so many of these Tiny Desk shows and I have a bunch of favorites,” he added, shouting out one highlight in particular: the 2018 set by 12-member D.C. go-go legends Trouble Funk.
According to NPR, like many Tiny Desk visitors, the Foos carefully plotted out their set before descending on the public radio workspace, “even taping out the dimensions of the Desk in a practice space to puzzle-out the close quarters” for the five-song blitz in D.C.-bred Grohl’s former hometown.
The frontman then strapped on an acoustic guitar, for a mostly unplugged roll through their 1999 classic “Learn To Fly,” before pivoting to one of the new album’s other rippers, “Child Actor.” Grohl prefaced a (slightly) toned-down version of that song by saying that one of the most challenging things about recording a new album is the many months in the studio and preparing to release the results.
“And then when you come out to perform you realize that you haven’t had a haircut in a year and it becomes really hard to see the fretboard,” he said, joking that during a recent scream-heavy performance of the song, he accidentally inhaled a mouthful of hair that made him sound like he was coughing up a furball.
Grohl encouraged the assembled NPR masses to scream along to the chorus of 1997’s The Colour and the Shape classic “My Hero,” as well as that album’s other stone -cold must-play, “Everlong” as the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers closed out the set.
Next up for the band is a set at the Bottlerock Napa Valley festival in Napa, Calif. on May 23, before they kick off a European tour on June 10 in Oslo; the band’s 2026 North American stadium run will commence on August 4 at Rogers Stadium in Toronto.
Watch the Foo Fighters’ Tiny Desk concert below.
