Dengue Fever

Meet the album that unleashed Dengue Fever's polyglot cultural mayhem on the world. The band has a Cambodian singer at the helm (the astral-voiced Chhom Nimol), but the sound owes as much to Ethiopian pop of the 1960s as it does to Cambodian classic rock. (Think saxophones as filtered through Addis Ababa, circa 1966.) They try their hand at a mix of originals and covers, coming up with a controlled weirdness that feels oddly familiar. Dengue Fever may be an acquired taste, but that's the best kind, isn't it?