Tank and the Bangas: The Tiny Desk That Changed Everything

The Tiny Desk That Changed Everything

In 2017, a band from New Orleans submitted a video to NPR's Tiny Desk Contest — a competition that receives thousands of entries from across the country. Tank and the Bangas won. And when the world saw what New Orleans already knew, everything changed.

The band formed in 2011, born out of an open mic night called Liberation Lounge at Blackstar Cafe and Books in Algiers. Lead singer Tarriona "Tank" Ball had a voice and a presence that could fill a stadium, but what made the band special was the chemistry — the way Tank and her bandmates played off each other with an energy that felt spontaneous and joyful and completely alive.

Their sound defies easy categorization: funk, soul, hip-hop, rock, spoken word, and a childlike sense of wonder that they've attributed to influences as diverse as anime and Disney. It's the kind of music that could only come from New Orleans — a city where genre boundaries have never meant much and the best musicians have always been the ones who refuse to stay in one lane.

The Tiny Desk win put them on the national radar, and a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist at the 2020 ceremony confirmed that Tank and the Bangas weren't just a viral moment — they were the real thing. In 2025, they won their first Grammy for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album, adding another dimension to a career that has always resisted definition.

Three studio albums — Think Tank, Green Balloon, Red Balloon — each one expanding the band's sonic universe while keeping the live-wire energy that made them famous. Tank and the Bangas are proof that New Orleans is still producing bands that sound like nowhere else on Earth. They walked into an open mic in Algiers, and they walked out as one of the most exciting acts in American music.