Above: WBUR’s giving a promotional boost to a singer from Southborough (images L-R screenshot of Tiny Desk submission and cropped from 2022 contributed photo)
In a story posted yesterday, WBUR called out Southborough singer-songwriter Padma as the station’s “Favorite Local Tiny Desk Contest Entry”.
For those not familiar, the Tiny Desk contest is run by NPR (National Public Radio). Each year, thousands of independent singers submit videos of themselves performing an original song (with or without bandmates). The winner is invited to perform a stripped down live performance from behind a “tiny desk” in the NPR studio.
According to WBUR’s story, over 200 of the entries this year hailed from Massachusetts. They put together a panel of experts and asked them to identify their favorite. Their winner was Padma Mynampaty, a Southborough, whose professional name is simply Padma.
The article explains that while there were slicker-looking video entries, they fell in love with Padma’s songwriting and her “wry relatability”.
You can read more here, including their interview of the 20-something singer whose back at her parents’ Southborough home over summer break from Syracuse University.
Padma reached out to me in 2021, when she was a St. Mark’s School junior, to promote her first EP release to readers. You can read about that here.
When I communicated with her the following year, she updated that she had taken down the EP which no longer “fit with the musical style” she was looking to create. (She also provided the updated headshot right.)
You can enjoy Padma’s Tiny Desk 2025 entry, “Good Sign”, in which she’s musically backed by three bandmates (VJ, Brunon, and Gavin) in the video below:
You can also preview below “Bending Backwards”, the single she released this year on Spotify:
