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Your local fan favorite Tiny Desk Contest entry is…
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Riah’s submission to NPR Music’s 2026 Tiny Desk Contest is an understated rendition of her song “Other Side.” In the video, which you can find on YouTube, she stands behind a microphone in a dimly lit room, crooning the metaphors of true infatuation. “You make the stars in the sky dim/ Your eyes hold daylight inside them,” riah sings over murmuring keyboard chords. Then the pace picks up, and doubt creeps in. “I never felt so real/ I never had these fears,” she sings with wistful apprehension. “I’ve never seen the other side of ‘some day’/ Maybe my ‘one day’ is you.”
“Other Side” has the cadence of a love song and the inner monologue of a neurotic. It presents a paradoxical picture of romance: the euphoric discovery of first love coupled with the destabilizing understanding that you now have something precious to lose.
The stripped-down R&B performance resonated with WBUR’s audience. “Other Side” took an early lead when we opened voting on the Massachusetts entries to the Tiny Desk Contest, ultimately beating out showier videos to become this year’s Local Fan Favorite.
On a recent afternoon, I met up with riah at a park near Boston University. It was the first day of real summer weather, and sunbathers dotted the lawn. The singer-songwriter, whose given name is Tatyana Fonseca, knew the park from her days as a student at BU.
“ I did a cappella there for all four years,” she said. “ That's where I felt like I really started building the determination to be an artist.”
Fonseca, 28, grew up in Hyde Park, surrounded by music in a Cape Verdean family. She remembers family parties set to a soundtrack of classic Cape Verdean singers like Bana and Cesária Evora. She excelled at school, but graduated college at the start of the pandemic. In that uncertain moment, she threw caution to the wind and decided to spend a year in Spain.
“ I almost gave myself permission to chase being an artist,” she said, “which is really what I've only ever wanted.”
A year abroad stretched to four. Fonseca immersed herself in the Madrid music scene. She eventually moved back to the States because it seemed like a better place to pursue music. In 2025, she released her debut album, “Garden.”
“Other Side” appears on “Garden,” the song’s longing melodies set to a sunny, shimmying beat. But the stripped-down version Fonseca recorded for the Tiny Desk Contest more closely resembles the song as it first emerged, during a trip to Cape Verde to visit family.
“ It really came from a place of very raw emotion,” Fonseca recalled. “It was one of the songs that I wrote sort of all at once, and those are some of my favorite songs.”
At the time, she was deep in the throes of her first love. `
“ It's rooted in the idea of when people tell you, ‘Oh, your time will come,’” she explained. “‘ One day, you're going to be able to feel this wonderful feeling that is love.’”
For a long time, she explained, she was on the other side of that feeling. When she finally fell in love, the reality was more complicated than she anticipated. What if things didn’t work out? Could she ever be sure if the relationship would last? That anxiety is palpable in the song’s second verse, a worried stream-of-consciousness that moves to an insistent internal rhythm.
“ I struggle with anxiety and self-criticism, as do many people,” Fonseca said. “ It can be challenging to be a good partner while also facing challenges that you have to overcome for yourself.”
The relationship didn’t last, but Fonseca seems philosophical about it now.
“ The feelings from the song, even if they don't exist in the same way anymore, they were such a formative part of who I am now,” she said. “I got to see the other side of being in love.”
