The Congolese octet transcends its inspiring backstory—five polio-disabled street musicians formed the group—with gritty-sweet harmonies, clattering percussion, and Roger Landu's primitive-futurist guitar sound, a needling sine wave, created on a homemade one-stringed electric satonge, that oscillates between Ernie Isley and a pedal steel. SBB offers a fresh, heartfelt take on twentieth-century Congolese rumba, and a particularly fine one at that. — By Richard Gehr

Price: $25