Sisters Lily and Madeleine Jurkiewicz aren't the youngest musicians ever to play the Tiny Desk, but they come pretty close. Their music — a restrained, homespun mix of folk and pop with undeniably sweet harmonies — certainly ranks among the loveliest we've heard.
Lily is just 16. Her sister Madeleine is 18. And while the older of the two Indiana natives recently headed off to college, leaving her sister behind to finish high school, they still write and record together. They released a stellar EP, The Weight of the Globe, last June, and a self-titled full-length debut followed in October.
Lily & Madeleine's openhearted ballads first found an audience in the fall of 2012, after the pair posted a video for "In the Middle" on YouTube. It quickly received more than a quarter of a million views — enough to draw the attention of the Sufjan Stevens-led Asthmatic Kitty label, which signed the sisters and released both their EP and their full-length album.
For the duo's Tiny Desk set, Lily & Madeleine chose not to perform that breakthrough song, opting instead to focus on newer material from the album: the wistful "Devil We Know," "Paradise" and "You Got Out."
Set List
Credits
Producers: Denise DeBelius, Robin Hilton; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Denise DeBelius, Mito Habe-Evans, Becky Harlan; photo by Meredith Rizzo/NPR
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