Why you should listen
The twin sisters of the French-Cuban electronic-soul duo Ibeyi, Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Díaz, were born in Paris but lived in Havana for the first two years of their lives before moving back to Paris. Their father was the famed Cuban percussionist Anga Díaz, a member of the Buena Vista Social Club. The sisters' music is a bewitching conflation of influences and storylines.
While firmly rooted in their Afro-Cuban culture and history, their second album, Ash, features samples of a speech given by former First Lady Michelle Obama and of a song by the Bulgarian choir Les Mystères des Voix Bulgares, the vocal stylings of the Spanish hip-hop artist Mala Rodriguez, a contribution on bass by Meshell Ndegeo-cello and an excerpt from The Diary of Frida Kahlo, among much more. This capacity to absorb the complexity and diversity of the world and transmute it into a vast array of emotions is the musical signature of the twins -- "Ibeyi" means twins in Yoruba, one of the three languages in which they sing (the others being English and French).