The xx: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

It s easy to think of The xx as a fashionable band: Its members have a sleek allinblack look, its typography and cover art is coolly and distinctively styled, and the group itself has been showered with validation, including Britain s 2010 Mercury Prize. But beneath all that tightly controlled imagemaking lays music that s raw and vulnerable; shy, worried tentativeness is wired into a sound that shimmers powerfully, but remains as fragile and delicate as a soap bubble. The xx s second album, Coexist, came out last fall, and it plays like a series of tensely lovely interludes, each building to a climax that never arrives. Plopped in front of Bob Boilen s desk and asked to play a few songs from the record, singerguitarist Romy Madley Croft and singerbassist Oliver Sim have reason to look slightly illatease: The setting and band configuration robs them of cover. No beats from member Jamie Smith, who opted to hang back at the hotel; no shroud of darkness or bright lights pointed outward to blunt the crowd