Loreena McKennitt · 1997 Spin it Again - This album proves that world music can be both atmospheric and meticulously produced, without ever sounding like a museum exhibit.

Lhasa de Sela · 1997 Spin it Again - She grew up on a school bus without electricity, learned Spanish from her father, and made an album so intimate it sounds like a secret being passed in a dark room.

Kasai Allstars · 2000 Spin it Again - Congolese guitar music so unhurried it rewrites what groove actually means.

Konono No. 1 · 2004 Spin it Again - They plugged thumb pianos into homemade amps and accidentally invented the future of percussion.

David Byrne & Brian Eno · 2001 Spin it Again - A 3 a.m. conversation between a nervous system and a city, recorded in New York the year everything changed.

Jon Hassell · 1978 Spin it Again - A 1978 record from Jon Hassell that rewards close listening.

Miriam Makeba · 1967 Spin it Again - She sang joy in America while her country burned, and made it sound like the only reasonable response.

Mulatu Astatke · 1974 Spin it Again - Mulatu Astatke didn't borrow from Western jazz so much as recognize the vibraphone was waiting to play an entirely different language.

Red Hot Org · 1994 Spin it Again - A benefit record that forgot to be polite about it — Laswell, Santana, Bootsy Collins, and Billy Higgins in the same room, the year after Ra died.

Peter Gabriel · 1989 Spin it Again - Peter Gabriel made a movie soundtrack that spent the next thirty years making the movie irrelevant.

Peter Gabriel · 1989 Spin it Again - Three years, a half-built studio, Youssou N'Dour, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and a brief to make music that sounds two thousand years old.

Natacha Atlas · 2010 Spin it Again - Atlas spent the nineties building a sound loud enough to fill clubs; here she proves she never needed the volume.

Sussan Deyhim · 2006 Spin it Again - Deyhim trained for years to sing in ceremonial contexts and then spent her career making sure none of those ceremonies exist.

Cheb i Sabbah · 2006 Spin it Again - Rahat Fateh Ali Khan over a four-on-the-floor kick drum, and somehow nobody flinches.

Weather Report · 1975 Spin it Again - Zawinul spent 1975 making jazz feel like it had somewhere to be, and for once it did.

Angélique Kidjo · 2021 Spin it Again - Kidjo handed a young Tuareg guitarist the keys and then sang over whatever he built like she'd been waiting her whole life for exactly that kind of trouble.