Khruangbin

Khruangbin is a Houston based band that originally came together around the members' love for the kind of rock music that was popular in Thailand in the '60s and '70s. Unlike other ethnographically oriented bands that pick up a particular regional sound (Altın Gün, Dengue Fever), they tap into other traditions as well, including Iranian rock of the same period, dubstep, desert blues (see Bombino, Tinariwen) and combine that with a kind of surf, funk, and a bit of incidental disco. The drummer Donald Johnson provides the strong backbeats, the bassist Laura Lee lays out the groove, while the guitarist Mark Speer is at the driver's seat carrying the primary melodic load of the songs since they mostly tend to be instrumentals. They have a distinct, instantly recognizable and relaxed sound, which qualifies as psychedelic to western ears, though at its core it is rock music filtered through some non-western musical traditions.