Natacha Atlas

Belgium produces some of the most energetic, fun, crazy “world” music (in the sense of traveling the world, not tie-dying it) in the, well, world. But for every day Roger 23 from Front 242 spends dressed in a giant eggshell at the Atomium in Brussels, for every hour the Lords of Acid spend recording endless paens to MDMA (legal in the civilized Low Countries) at their studio on the Antwerp docks — no doubt counteracting the headaches caused by neighboring noise terrorist the Flat Earth Society — Belgian-born Natacha Atlas soothes the weirdness away within seconds with her forlorn, Middle East-inflected vocals.