Foo Fighters stopped by the NPR offices to rattle through a five-song setlist as part of the broadcaster’s Tiny Desk series.
Playing in front of NPR’s staff, Dave Grohl and co. showcased two songs from their new album Your Favorite Toy, namely Spit Shine and Child Actor. They also played a handful of their greatest hits, including Learn To Fly, My Hero and Everlong.
“It’s an honour to be here. I’ve watched so many of these Tiny Desk shows and have a bunch of favourites. When I saw Trouble Funk squeeze into this office space here I thought, ‘It’s not that tiny,’” Dave says in the video.
Later, to introduce Child Actor, he says that he almost choked on his own hair while playing the song on Saturday Night Live UK recently.
“When you come out to perform [after months in the studio], you realise you haven’t had a haircut in a year and it becomes really hard to see the fretboard - not only hard to see the fretboard, but inhaling hair into your throat,” he says, joking that the noise he made on the last chorus as he choked was like “the furball sound your cat makes”.
“Let’s pray it doesn’t happen again,” he says.
In the run-up to the performance, the Foos had taped out the dimensions of the Tiny Desk in a practice space as they rehearsed to figure out how it would work in such a confined space. Any best laid plans, however, were quickly thrown out.
"If you put instruments in our hands and there are people," Dave jokes, "it's fun to play!"
Watch Foo Fighters' Tiny Desk set below: