The Austin 100: Field Medic

By Stephen Thompson

Published March 17, 2020 at 5:00 AM EDT

Hometown: San Francisco, California

Genre: Folk

Why We're Excited: As Field Medic, singer-songwriter Kevin Patrick Sullivan uses the sparest of ingredients — an acoustic guitar, sparse drum-machine beats, an unadorned voice — to build lo-fi folk songs that crackle with vibrant intimacy. In "henna tattoo," Sullivan's small but vividly poetic details help bring together a tentative and vulnerable song about jealousy, insecurity, doubt and "rolling blackouts in your heart."

Listen to Field Medic's "henna tattoo"

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Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)

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