"I am a traveler in the lone desert/It's nothing special," sings Ibrahim Al Alhabib in the Tamascheck language of his Touareg tribe. The lines kick off an album destined for the upper reaches of most international-music mavens' top-10 lists, because Tinariwen's music - part provocation, part trance - is special, with a romantic and revolutionary backstory to boot. While in exile during their tribe's rebellion against Mali's government, the formerly acoustic band developed a unique take on the West Africa-seeded electric blues that emerged from the Mississippi Delta. Hypnotic loping guitars shuffle against syncopated clapping, djembe drums and female ululation in songs about life on the dusty road, exasperation with tribal capitulations to modernity and the trouble with camels.

-Richard Gehr