Grizzly Bear Live: In-Studio Performance Tonight

The Brooklyn band Grizzly Bear releases one of the year’s most hotly anticipated albums next week, but fans can hear some of its songs sooner than that: On Thursday, May 21, the group will perform a special acoustic set, including material from Veckatimest, when it opens WNYC’s American Music Festival with a live in-studio broadcast and webcast. Starting at 7 p.m. ET, Grizzly Bear will perform new songs in the studio, with host David Garland welcoming the band and asking its members about their new music.

Grizzly Bear can be loosely described as a rock group, but its adventurous, unusual songs have led to its members performing concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the band’s album Yellow House made The New York Times’ list of the top CDs of 2006. With lyrics that abstractly imply shifting personal relationships — alongside music that’s full of angles, shadows and flashes of color — it’s easy to imagine songs that hardly hold together. But somehow, these tenuous elements combine to form music that’s powerful and engrossing. The show will be stream here from May 21-May 27, 7pm-11pm (8pm-11pm on Saturday and Sunday).