Tinde drums imitate the rhythms of a camel’s walk. Added to this are riffs on the string instrument imzad, and some funky strumming on a lute called tehardent. The serpentine music and melodic vocals merge to create a groove both familiar and hypnotic. It’s the desert blues of Mali—but unlike other superstars of the genre, Tartit is fronted by female musicians, carrying an outspokenly feminist message. They sing about divorce and women’s rights, as well as the Tuareg’s struggle in Mali for peace and democracy. Homesickness is another recurring theme on their new album Amankor / The Exile: songs indeed written in exile, while band members were forced to live in refugee camps in Burkina Faso and Mauritania because of the violent unrest in their home region of Timbuktu.

Drawing inspiration from the northern Swedish forests and mountains, Gidge sounds like a mixture of electronic and organic elements. Along with wistful voice samples and warm, fuzzy chord progressions, Gidge forges a unique sound. The duo consists of Jonatan Nilsson and Ludvig Stolterman. These two Umeå natives met at school, soon bonding over their common interest in electronic music, and started producing songs together. Twelve years on, they have released their debut album Autumn Bells, the EP För Seoul, the short film Lulin, and the mini-album LNLNN on the Atomnation label. The group won XLR8R’s prize for “Best New Artist” and has played to full houses in Amsterdam, Berlin, and London.

Born in the Dominican Republic, as a boy Kelman Duran moved to New York City, where he was raised on jazz and hip hop. Today, he is a musician, filmmaker, and writer. His first album 1804 Kids was a bouncy mix of reggaeton and trippy, manipulated voicework. While the title may have referred to the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), it was first and foremost a festive music for the body, the sound of endorphins flowing. But his latest release, 13th Month, is another story. Dancehall, gqom, kuduro, and hip-hop rhythms emerge slowly from a dark netherworld of synths and echoing samples. Fragments from Notorious B.I.G’s Ready to Die blend with recordings of an activist from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In parallel to his music, Kelman Duran has been working on a film about Native Americans. Introducing this theme into his music, he makes parallels between the shadow lives of those living in the reservation and those inhabiting the ghettos of the inner city.