Out of more than 6,000 entries for this year’s NPR Tiny Desk Contest, a group from Lehi, Utah, is one of the five finalists. It’s a 15-person ensemble called The King Will Come. The worship song they entered is called “Welcome.”
The chorus opens with the singers soulfully harmonizing, “Welcome, welcome to the kingdom.”
“So it's like, ‘Hey, you're welcome in the kingdom of God,” explained Tamy Stevens, the song’s soloist and one of the writers.
“You don't need to stress about who you are, where you're at in your faith, where you're at in your walk with God, and your relationship with God. You are still welcome despite anything.”
Tiny Desk judge Bobby Carter said they’re always looking for something they’ve never seen or heard before and that they found something they didn’t even know they wanted in this song. It’s worship music that defies genres, but it sounds like a mix of gospel, soul and rap.
That’s not the kind of music you’d probably expect to come out of Utah County, since the majority of residents there are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly called Mormons. Gospel music isn’t typically part of the faith tradition. The King Will Come, though, is religiously diverse — some are Latter-day Saints, others are Pentecostal or non-denominational.
“The whole group is about a kind of stepping away from where our traditions raised us,” Stevens said. “We're kind of coming together just on the basis of Jesus alone.”
The artists in the collective were all writing faith-based songs outside of their more secular solo careers, so, since they needed that outlet, they decided to perform together.
The winner of the 2026 Tiny Desk Contest will be announced Tuesday, May 12.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Ciara Hulet: What was it like writing a song that taps so deeply into questions of faith with people from different denominations and religious backgrounds?
Tamy Stevens: Honestly, I would say for myself, personally, it really doesn't matter what denomination you come from or what background you have; it's about relationship with God. And that's why writing this song resonated so much with me. It was like, I have my own questions about faith, you know, every day. I'm very much devout, but also everybody's questioning something about faith. There's not one person I think that can say that they've got it all together and that they know everything.
So I feel like writing this song was like, “Hey, if you're questioning, if you're devout, if you just need a community, whatever it is, you're welcome.” God doesn't put caps on his kingdom. And I think in this world today, there's a lot of lines that get drawn in the sand, when the only thing that should be in the sand is that one footprint where he's carrying us. And that's where that song resonated with me. And it was so easy to write because of that. It was like, yeah, I completely understand what it's like to feel like you're in the dark, and you need that welcoming from God. And not just God, but from his people, too.
CH: It seems almost radical to say today that everyone is welcome. What do you hope people will feel or do after hearing the song?
TS: Where you're at does not disqualify you from God loving you, so just take the first step of saying, “OK, I'm willing.” Being willing, along with being welcome, is a really great place to be at. So it's like the invitation is always open from God. And just take the step forward. Just take that step towards God as he takes a step towards you. It's a partnership to come together.
So I'm hoping that when people hear the song, they feel welcome and that they feel like no matter how their life may be going or what they're dealing with in their personal lives, or whatever the issue may be — I know there's a lot going on in the world today, and there's so many reasons that you could say no to an invitation to God. Even if you have a “no,” you're welcome.
CH: What about those who don't believe in God?
TS: I don't think that that disqualifies. There was a time I did not believe in God. And you get brought up in church, but that doesn't always mean that you'll believe in God. You get to get to that place where you become an adult and you've got autonomy, and you're like, “OK, I can do what I want. I don't have to believe what my parents, you know, forced on me as a kid.” So I know what that feels like. And it took that welcoming from God for me to come back into that place where it was like, “OK, I can take the first step.” So if you're not feeling it, and you don't necessarily believe in God, either way, it's a good song.
CH: You break out into rap in the middle of “Welcome” and the NPR judges said they were blown away by how genre-bending the song is. Do you need to reach across genres to make the point you're trying to make?
TS: I don't think the goal was to reach across genres. Honestly, it just naturally happened because of just the diversity of people in the room. We were like, coming together for the first time when this song got written. And it was like, “Hey, we've got something here.” And it was just like, more so, very organic and natural. It didn't come as like, “Oh, we have to write this type of song for this type of people, or because we have diversity, we need to have a diverse song.” It wasn't that wasn't the goal at all.
I wrote my verse in like 10 minutes. It was so quick. And I was like, “Oh, it's because we're coming together and we're creating community,” that it's so easy to just effortlessly lean on each other in the writing session, and the song just flowed. There wasn't necessarily a goal to bend genres, but it for sure happened.
CH: What are your group's musical influences?
TS: OK, so as funny as it is, everybody's got their own thing going on. I know we've got pop singers, we've got Christian singers. I sing R&B, I'm not like a Christian rapper. With us, it was like we're all doing all these different things, but not having that worship and faith outlet that we all really were desperately needing at the time. So for us, it was really about letting this group, this coming together, be a filter where we can pour our hearts out to a God we all identify with loving. I needed this outlet.
Honestly, we were not expecting it to blow up in the way that it did. It was really just like a family coming together, a community coming together and trying to create something beautiful and welcoming for the rest of the community to join in with us on it. I'd say our genres are all over the place as individuals, but together, it all just kind of works.
CH: Getting into the Tiny Desk Contest and making it this far — is this about promoting your music or the message?
TS: I think it's about the message more than anything. We're not, like, making a ton of money doing this. A lot of us moved from our hometowns to be together as a group. It was really just about the message for us as a group. And then once we got the message together, let's spread it to those who are in desperate need of love, of community, of hope, of strength. Those who are lost, those who are maybe not strong in their faith, those who are questioning God, those who are questioning life, those who are maybe not wanting to live anymore. There is something for you.
