Gracenote's Best of 2008!

Ethan Holtzman returned from a late-'90s trip to Southeast Asia with ideas of a Cambodian psychedelic-rock revival dancing through his head. Other folks might have been content to leave that as a unique but passing fancy, but Ethan and his brother Zac (formerly of San Francisco's Dieselhed) went looking for a Khmer-speaking singer in Long Beach's Little Phnom Penh district and found Cambodian pop singer Chhom Nimolin. By 2001, Dengue Fever was a six-piece band recording world pop for hipsters.

Their self-titled debut, released in 2003, included covers of '60s Cambodian rock songs as well as originals penned by Zac Holtzman and translated to Khmer by Nimol. 2008's Venus On Earth, their third full-length release, retains the psychedelic organ and spy-movie soundtrack riffs of the first two albums, though the English-language songs reveal a Bollywood-style silliness that toes the line between good-time shtick and cartoonishness.

- Wendy Smith

Originally published 02/11/2008.